The Order: New Blood
by Shulamith Bonderovsky
Summary: The Empire has been defeated at Endor, all is well...right? No- the dark side is as strong as ever, and it's up to the New Sith Order, led by Darth Bane II, to find the disturbance...and kick its butt.
1. Bane

The New Sith Order, formerly the New Sith Guild, crowded into the Kimorra tavern right before the midnight rush. The place wasn't empty, but it was quiet still- only a few of the low, round tables were occupied, and the bar was clear. The tavern was a smaller place, with wide blue-glassed picture windows and dimmed violet fluorescent lamps, plus the notes of some good classic soft-shred music wafting through the air like perfume. Ordinarily, the whole Order wouldn't have fit in one pub, but the senior masters had left behind the apprentices the order had already gained since winning New Republic approval. Their makeshift headquarters, laughably called the New Sith Temple, were situated in Coruscant's Crimson Corridor neighborhood for budget reasons, and someone had to be left in the building at all times to guard against the ranats and potential squatters. And after all, as Darth Apathian stated, summing up a fundamental truth of the master-learner relationship, "That's what apprentices are for."

Darth Bane, formerly Her Imperial Grace, the Princess Mara-Jade, and before that Mearegeode Tharssen of Tatooine, exhaled in relief as she sat down at the bar. Everyone needed this- after the journey from Tatooine, the struggle to win senatorial approval, and the search for a halfway-suitable base of operations, everyone had been under a lot of stress, and people had practically been whipping out their lightsabers over such differences as who got the last beer. It would've only been a matter of time before someone lost an arm, or worse. She was also glad they seemed to like the cantina she had chosen. Most of them would have preferred somewhere larger, more drug-filled, and more expensive, but Bane had exercised her executive power and brought everyone here. She'd seen this place when she was finalizing the real estate deal on the Temple, and even talked with the woman, Niama Viviani, who co-owned and ran it with her husband, Ardan Teta. Niama was a good woman who, as a recovered death stick addict, took pains to run a clean, relatively honest pub. Bane hadn't met Ardan yet, but aside from a rather shady past, he was a prince, according to Niama. Bane also enjoyed the literary reference of the cantina's name, which probably escaped most of the clientele, including her Sith.

Speaking of her Sith, a few were attempting to stare at her surreptitiously, Bane noticed. This would be the first time they had seen her in a dress, she realized- a proper dress, not one of the ankle-length kirbli-weave skirts her mother had sewn her the last time she had visited the Tribe. This dress was bought secondhand, and the style was about twenty years out of date, but it was a real dress- it was red with black trim, sleeveless, with a liberal neckline and a ruffled skirt that did not cover her knees. Most importantly, it fit Bane's body. That was unusual. Bane was a big woman- 'fat' didn't tell the whole story, because although Bane was no supermodel, she did carry several pounds of muscle where her limbs were concerned, and there was also the fact that she was closer to two meters tall than some of her men, and broad-shouldered besides. Tusken genetics and the eating habits of the New Sith had combined to give her a body that was incredibly difficult to dress. That wasn't even taking into account her cropped red curls, which clashed with almost all colors besides black.

She waved at Niama, who sidled over. Niama was a handsome woman, still fairly young, but with a look of weariness about her. "What can I get you, ma'am?"

"Can you do a White Bantha?" Bane inquired. The drink was a Tatooine favorite, but in the Core, it tended to be harder to find.

"Sure. Coming right up." Niama set to work. A cloud of apprehension floated around her like an odor. Bane saw the barista shoot her sidelong glances, looking as though she definitely had something on her mind.

"There something you want to ask me, Niama?" she said at last.

Niama set the drink down. Like all good White Banthas, it was served in a pint glass. White Banthas were developed by the Tusken originally, just as it had been the Tusken who were the original distillers of the dry, strong kirbli-seed whiskey that was used to make them. White Banthas were equal parts whiskey and bantha milk or yogurt, mixed with kirbli-flower honey, a few spices, and pieces of dried fruit if you could get them. They were known for being extremely potent, and for allegedly having some actual nutritional content. They had originally been invented, Bane had always heard, as a provision for the warpath, because they could be consumed and carried more easily than solid food. A lot of Tusken cooking utilized alcohol; Bane had heard that once you knew this about the Tusken, they instantly became much more understandable as a culture.

"Um, yes, actually." Niama looked at her. "Wait- you know my name."

"I was in here before. You probably don't remember."

"I remember your face. Look…are you that woman who runs that offshoot of the Sith Lords?"

"That's me. Darth Bane." Bane shook Niama's hand, reaching out through the Force. "You…have someone you want me to test for Force-sensitivity?"

"Did you just read my mind?"

"Educated guess. Want me to do it now?"

"Can you?"

"I've taken to carrying one of the pocket kits. You wouldn't believe how many people want to test their kids, now that the Empire's not claiming Force-sensitives anymore." Bane slid off her stool and followed Niama behind the bar, into the back room, and up a flight of stairs. The doorway they passed through opened up to the small but neat main room of an apartment. Most of the space was a sitting room, with a small kitchen and one large table in a corner. Three doors in the wall presumably led to the bedrooms and refresher. At the center of the room, on a clean but sagging couch, a girl of about fifteen sat, partly covered by a blanket, watching some HoloNet program listlessly on a screen with old, fading plasma. By the dim bluish glow, Bane observed her. She was short, solidly built, probably even chunky. She was gifted with a graceful, round face, light blue eyes, and shoulder-length bronze-colored hair that would probably be beautiful if it had been washed recently. At this moment, there was a redness around her eyes, and Bane could see tear streaks drying on her cheeks. She turned to peer at Bane and her mother guardedly. In her face was written the question: _What does the universe want with me now?_

"Gaya, this is Darth Bane," introduced Niama softly. "Darth Bane, this is my daughter, Gaya."

"Nice to meet you, Gaya." Darth Bane smiled as nicely as she could. Adolescence and secondary school were not kind to girls like Gaya; she knew that firsthand.

"Nice to meet you, too." Gaya still looked suspicious.

"Gaya, Darth Bane is going to test your midi-chlorian levels," Niama explained.

Gaya frowned. "But…Mom, we just…" She looked confused, then conflicted, and then seemed to come to a decision. "Look, Miss…Darth Bane, I, um, I appreciate you coming up here and doing this, but, look, I just went to the New Jedi Order's headquarters last week with Mom, and they tested me, and I don't have them. Midi-chlorians. Not enough, anyway; I'm not sure, that wasn't clear. But I'm not Force-sensitive. I don't know why Mom brought you here. I'm sorry." She did not meet Bane's eyes.

Bane turned to Niama. She hadn't known the woman long, but it still seemed so out of character for Niama to be so in denial. "Is that true?"

Niama shook her head. "I know what you're thinking. A week ago, I was willing to accept that Gaya wasn't Force-sensitive. But…things have changed. My husband and I have…evidence that the test must have been wrong."

"What kind of evidence?" asked Bane. She felt deeply as though she'd rather be anywhere but here; if Niama was determined that her daughter was Force-sensitive when she wasn't, an ugly scene was coming.

"Convincing evidence," said a soft voice from behind Bane, who turned as a wave rippled through the dark side.


	2. Ardan

The man was not especially tall or broad-shouldered, and his features- neatly combed light brown hair; thin, pale lips; and ice-blue eyes- while not especially ugly, were not intimidating or, to be honest, overwhelmingly attractive either. Were it not for the worn-looking jacket over the workman's canvas unisuit, the man probably would have struck A. Kirlan, hall monitor at the public secondary school PS 1088 of Coruscant, as some kind of government bureaucrat, possibly an inspector or census-taker of some kind.

Kirlan looked up just in time to see the man striding past the monitor's desk. "Sir, hold on there a minute."

The man pivoted and stormed back, leaning across the desk. "What?" he snapped. A parent, Kirlan decided. Definitely a parent.

"You gotta sign the visitor's log, sir," he said calmly. "Got to have a visitor's pass to go beyond this desk. For the kids' safety."

"I am the stepfather of one of the students here, not to mention a taxpayer whose credits paid for this building, and your wages," he said impatiently. "Besides, I come here all the time, to meet with Pupil Personnel. Everyone knows who I am. And I was called down here, anyway."

"Maybe, sir, but you've still got to sign in here."

The man scribbled his name on the pad with the digipen. Kirlan looked down at it, and managed to make out what looked like _Ardan Teta_ amid the flourishes. "You don't need to see my identification?" Ardan Teta asked.

"No, sir. Just the signature."

"But that is ridiculous. I could be anyone, and simply say I was Ardan Teta."

Kirlan decided he was getting tired of this. "You're absolutely right, sir. Next time I'm having a drink with one of my numerous contacts at Sector Hall, I'll be sure and bring that up."

Teta pursed his lips and snatched the visitor's pass. "Which way is the infirmary?"

Kirlan pointed. "Down that hall." The man stalked off in the direction indicated, and Kirlan shrugged and went back to the media player he'd confiscated from a student just that morning. _Parents,_ he thought. _Always acting like they're the freaking Emperor or something._

"Originally, she had been sent to the principal's office," Ardan Teta explained to Bane calmly. She, her second-in-command Darth Witicca, Niama, and Ardan were seated around the Teta-Vivianis' kitchen table. "But apparently she was sick in the waiting area, so they sent her down to the infirmary. They had called her caseworker, but she was with another student. Busy. As she has been for over a month." He shook his head contemptuously. "Useless."

"It's not her fault. She's the only one they have, and there's five hundred students in Gaya's grade alone," said Niama placatingly. "It's the fault of whoever decides what amount of government funds go to public schools. Coruscant's system is nearly bankrupt, and most Core and Rim systems' schools have the same problems." She looked up at Bane. "I know you're friendly with Chancellor Organa. I don't mean to offend you."

"That's okay." Bane shifted. "I need to know more about the…event."

Ardan nodded. "Gaya could explain it best, but she's…tired. Overwrought. She knows we never thought she'd be the sort of student who is suspended. We don't blame her entirely for this, but she's still hard on herself." He took a deep breath. "Gaya was in physical education. She's had difficulty in that class- the instructor is not patient with her, and the other students have taken their cue from the instructor. There were some boys who had been bothering her for a while. We tried to arrange a meeting with the instructor about it, and about her behavior, but she never responded to our messages. Anyway, these boys…they had her cornered, and they were…she wouldn't tell me details, but they were giving her a hard time. So she…" He paused, articulation failing him. "Well, as I understand it, it was a bit of an automatic reaction, not voluntary, but she…I'm not sure how to explain it. What the proper term is." He paused again, and made another try. "She shot electricity at them. From her hands. Her fingers."

Witicca and Bane were silent, and then Witicca said, "And Master, you re-did the test?"

"Yep," murmured Bane, preoccupied.

"And?"

"Trace levels. It wasn't- _shouldn't have been_- enough."

"We can produce witnesses," Ardan intoned. "The boys. Other students, the instructor. Possibly even security footage."

Bane nodded. Incredible as it was, she did believe them. But two different tests couldn't have both been wrong, could they?

Would the Jedi have a reason to fake midi-chlorian test results?

_Oh please,_ she chided herself. _Don't be paranoid. That's something the old Sith would have thought. That's idiotic. These New Jedi might be a bit…well, they wouldn't do this. Besides, I doubt they'd have the stones._

But then what did that mean? About midi-chlorians and the Force? Even her own Master, Lord Vader, had always told her that you couldn't have a Force connection without midi-chlorians, and that the number determined the connection's strength. But that notion was from before the Clone Wars, and it hadn't been studied in years.

Could it be wrong?

_Don't get ahead of yourself. Slow down and focus on the issue at hand._ "If Gaya did this, then she's either Force-sensitive or-" Bane realized she didn't know what the 'or' could be. "Well, at any rate, she should be trained. At least for a little while, so we can see what abilities she has."

Niama nodded. "I was hoping you'd say that. We want Gaya to go to your Temple for her education. We don't want her in that school anymore, and we can't afford a private school. But she has needs that they're not meeting."

Bane had a notion, not quite through the Force, but from her own intuition. "Needs? Like, what kind of needs?"

Niama and Ardan exchanged a glance, and then Ardan said, "You understand that if you refuse to accept Gaya at your temple because of what we are about to divulge, we will take your Order to court."

Witicca glanced questioningly at Bane, who, for the second time in one night, made an executive decision and nodded. "We've got it."

"Gaya has Krandyn's Disorder," said Niama, a touch defiantly, as if she expected Bane and Witicca to burst out with interjections of ridicule or disgust.

Instead, the two Sith exchanged a nod. "We know about that at the Order," Bane explained. "One of our masters, Darth Griminus, had it, although he was self-diagnosed."

Niama smiled. "That's a relief. Could we meet with him?"

Witicca looked down, and Bane took a deep breath. "He's dead," she explained. "We came from Tatooine, see, in the Outer Rim. We had some members in fighters, protecting the ships with the apprentices and supplies and stuff, and we ran into a renegade Imperial fleet. Griminus was in one of the fighters, and he got shot down."

"We lost a lot of men," Witicca added.

"Krandyn's won't be a problem," assured Bane. She knew she was probably lying. There'd be kilometers of red tape to unwind once the New Republic clerks got wind that the Order was taking on an apprentice with 'special needs.' And there were still the reactions of the other masters, and the other apprentices. Most of the masters had tolerated Griminus' differences. Asking them to teach someone with those differences would be a whole new problem. _But I'm the Master, and this is my will. We'll deal with all that however we need to._

"What about physical qualifications?" asked Ardan, more calmly but also in a hushed tone. "She has balance and coordination problems. And she's had weight issues all her life. They're not helped by the physical side effects of the Krandyn's."

Bane smiled, thinking of her own thunder thighs. "I don't believe we have any physical qualifications, actually."

"Every single New Sith doesn't need to be able to dispatch an entire battalion single-handed," added Witicca. "People have different skills. I mean, Darth Sidious was, like, a hundred years old or something when he took power, and he only ever sat in his office and manipulated people as far as we-" He glanced at Bane and coughed nervously. "But, even besides that, once we teach her to harness the Force, she can use it to help herself out with physical stuff."

Ardan nodded, appeased. Then, he said, "Although, of course, Darth Sidious did do some fighting."

"When he was younger, probably, sure," agreed Witicca airily. "But he was this old guy, and he looked like he'd blow over in a strong wind-"

"I'm actually quite certain he fought as an older man, too. I distinctly remember reading that somewhere."

"Ardan, they're Sith," Niama interjected. "I'm sure they'd know about one of their own. I mean, I understand you guys are different and not into taking over the government now, but you know what I mean. Sorry, my husband is sort of an amateur expert on Palpatine's regime."

"Oh?" Bane smiled politely, trying not to make it a grimace. "Did you ever vote for him?"

"Absolutely not," replied Ardan firmly. "Even before he created the Empire, the man subverted the Constitution and cut our civil liberties to ribbons in the name of security. Restricting freedom by playing on fear- it's the oldest dirty trick in the political book. I think the only good thing he ever did was to try to end Jedi influence over the Old Republic and the Galactic Senate. Although of course his reasons for doing so were barbaric. But the Jedi are a religion, yet they received- and now continue to receive- taxpayer funding and the backing of the Senate, with no oversight whatsoever. But no, I have never supported Palpatine. He makes a fascinating character study, however. You are…less than enamored of him yourself?" He asked Bane, who nodded as brusquely as she could. She really had hoped to be able to avoid this subject, for one night at least. _Just one bloody night…_

"He was a power-mad bastard who screwed with people's lives for entertainment," she said. "He ruined my Master's life utterly and he completely disrupted mine." She could feel her mood going sour, and it wasn't just the Palpatine talk. Ardan created a definite impression in the Force- and so did Gaya, which was encouraging. But Ardan…what bothered her was not that his Force-shadow was fraught with the dark side, but that she could hardly sense it at all. There was the sensation that it existed, but she couldn't seem to focus directly on it. It was like looking for a black hole- a person could observe its gravitational pull, the absolute lack of light in the space it was supposed to occupy, even the calculations proving its existence. But the thing itself was invisible even to someone looking directly at it through a telescope. Trying to find the black hole of Ardan Teta's Force-presence made Bane's head hurt. "Look, send us the paperwork and everything, all right? As soon as everything's settled at her old school, call us and we'll make some preparations." She scribbled down the contact information on the digipad Niama offered her, and stood gratefully. "Don't worry, Gaya," she called to the girl still curled up on the couch. The girl could probably do with a kind word. "I'm sure you'll make a fine addition to our Order, and we're looking forward to having you." She led Witicca out of the room as quickly as she could without turning an ankle in the ridiculous boots she was wearing. They'd been a present from Leia, and Bane had so few items of clothing that were not either practical or of cultural significance.

They were silent for a time after that. Niama had pulled out the manuscript she had been hired to ghostwrite for the publishing company and Ardan had settled himself in the armchair by the small window with a printout of a Senatorial periodical. For their neighborhood in the Orange District and their general economic bracket, they were a literary family. Gaya would likely have read too, had she not still been recuperating from the day. At last, Gaya said, "What if it doesn't work there, either?"

Ardan looked up first. "What was that again, love?"

"What if it doesn't…work? With the Sith."

"Then we will try something else. Homeschooling, maybe. Don't worry about it. It will work. I can feel it, Gaya." He smiled at her. "I can't help but feel…that this is meant to be."


	3. Jaina

Jaina Breha Solo tried hard to concentrate on the rerun of _Imperial Girls_ hovering slightly over the 3D plasma screen in front of her. It was at once easy and strangely difficult. On the one hand, the program was a reality show depicting the lives of the daughters, nieces, and even young mistresses of various Imperial higher-ups- ministers, naval officers, and even, for a while, diplomats of the Imperial Senate. It ogled the luxury of the girls' overprivileged lifestyles, while simultaneously setting the girls up as superficial, malicious, self-absorbed bitches. It had, understandably, been canceled within months of the New Republic victory at Endor, although Jaina had heard that a spin-off, featuring the female relations of administrators and representatives of the New Senate, was in the works. Jaina didn't typically like reality programming, but the show was addictive and moderately sexy. It was, unfortunately, an all-human cast- Jaina's personal opinion, although she didn't like to objectify other females, was that a few pretty alien women would have done the show no end of good.

On the one hand, the show was not complicated- it was easy to follow, required no intellectual effort. On the other hand, the show…was not complicated. There was nothing to distract Jaina's formidable mind from whirring away. And at that moment, Jaina needed a distraction.

The floor outside her closed bedroom door creaked beneath the slow, heavy footsteps of her father. Each member of her family had a distinctive step. Her mother's footsteps were faster, and more measured. Her twin brother Jacen's were soft, cautious, even graceful- difficult to hear at all. Her youngest brother Annie's footsteps were still ungainly, fast and hard against the immaculate floor as he ran, clomping, down the hall. Jaina guessed her own footsteps must sound like something, too, but she didn't know what.

She heard the knock. "_Come in,"_ she said, trying not to snarl. She wasn't sure if she succeeded.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walk in- her father always walked casually, as if he owned the place (although in this case, of course, he sort of did)- and settle himself on the side of her bed. He was waiting, she knew. Unlike her mother, her father believed in waiting for the kids to talk to him, unless he was really enraged.

What was the point in giving him the cold shoulder? It wasn't his fault he happened to be married to _her_. "Why's she always got to have some kind of problem with me?"

He seemed to consider the question. At last, he said, "Well, this one is sort of legitimate, don't you think?"

"It's my body!"

"Not while you're a minor. While you're underage, your health is our responsibility. And since we're talking about the law, by the way, you broke it, kid. When you went and had that done. Forging your parent's signature on a waiver is a crime."

Even Jaina knew that was right. But only in the technical sense was it not her body. If she were to get pregnant or something, she couldn't say, "Well, legally it's not my uterus, it's yours, so you raise the kid." If something like that happened, you could bet there'd be talk about 'taking responsibility for one's own actions' and crap like that. It was only 'her body' when she'd made a mistake with it. But her parents never listened to logic like that.

"I don't see why she's so pissed," she opined instead. "Her best friend has Sith tattoos. Two. On her _face_."

Her father sat back. "First of all, Aunt Bane's tattoos look hideous. No, Jaina. They do. Your mom and I don't want you to ruin your face, which is knockout gorgeous, with that stuff."

"I didn't get it done on my face-"

"Second of all," he cut her off. "This tattoo you got- the Running Darkness, or whatever-"

"It's called the Pursuant Dark, Dad."

"The Pursuant Dark. Okay. This Pursuant Dark tattoo you got is permanent. You get that? As in, never coming off. That thing's going to be on your arm forever. Even if you get it lasered off, you're going to have this gigantic scar until the day you die."

"I'm going to be a New Sith until the day I die. So, okay." She shook her head. "See, this is what I mean. You and Mom still think I'm going through a phase. Like when I told Mom how I liked that new Falleen girl-"

"Cut your mom some slack. She went from being royal to being a revolutionary, and the thing about us rebels was that we weren't hugely concerned with things like who everyone was attracted to, so she never had any contact with people who have that orientation. You just took her by surprise-"

"She was worried about her career. The way she always is. And cut out that 'revolution' crap. It wasn't a revolution. Rich people are still rich and the poor people are still poor. It was just a regime change, and I've had it with all this crap they sell us in school about how great democracy is-"

"You know, it's always so damn cute when you lecture me about what happened before you were even born." A part of her brain not drunk on rage registered that she'd riled him. He took a breath, and looked at her thoughtfully. "What's the matter with you?"

"What, that I'm not some Hothian snow lemming like the others who just blindly follows-"

"No." His tone silenced her. "I mean why are you so angry?"

"Because this tattoo thing is emblematic of the attitude you people take toward my interests and personal values-"

"No, I mean why are you so angry _all the time."_ He spread his hands. "Look, I know you're into the dark side and channeling your anger, and that's okay because I think you're right about that- don't tell your uncle Luke, but you and even Bane are right. You can't just wish away your feelings. It's better to use 'em for something constructive. But you can use your anger without always being angry. I mean, I look back even at the way you were a couple years ago- you weren't like this. You don't see your school friends. You fight with us all the time- and I know that's normal for teen girls, but we don't just fight, we have these big…things. And they never get resolved. Especially between you and your mom. She tries really hard, and it's like you don't even want her to anymore, just so you can be mad at her for not trying. And you're so cynical. And every time we say anything nice about Jacen or Annie you take it as a criticism of you. I don't know what you want from us."

Jaina struggled not to roll her eyes. Her mother barely tried- everything had to be on her schedule. Besides, the woman was fundamentally the opposite of everything Jaina stood for politically. She was bourgeoisie, so focused on maintaining the status quo that it was hard to imagine how she could ever have been a revolutionary. In fact, Jaina sometimes had the dark suspicion that her mother had led the Alliance mostly so that she could rise to the level of political power she had achieved in the New Republic. That maybe her issue with Palpatine wasn't his subjugation of freedom, but that he was in her way.

Couldn't her father tell that Leia Organa preferred Jacen, and to a lesser degree, Annie? Oh, she loved Jaina, Jaina didn't doubt that, but personally, it might just be that she didn't _like_ her very much. Jacen, uncle Luke remarked often, had the character of Luke's Jedi Master, Ben Kenobi. He was focused on his budding career as a Jedi, and echoed the philosophy of his uncle, that Jedi shouldn't get involved in politics. He was courteous and _correct_, a perfect politician's son. Annie was just cute- he still clung to Jaina's mother whenever she was home, and was content to sit in her arms for image-ops. But Leia had always used to compare her to Jacen, especially in the area of school reports.

Her father sighed. "I guess it's good you're going to the Sith Temple soon," he said. "They've got experience with angry people. Maybe they can help you."

She tried to calm down again after he left, but a few tears of frustration and rage slipped out of the corners of her eyes. Annie, who had an instinct for these things, found her and curled up with his head in the crook between her arm and her side. She changed the channel; _Imperial Girls _was in no way appropriate for kids his age.


	4. The Question

Darth Witicca met the girl, Gaya Viviani, at the halfway point between the apartment above the Kimorra and the New Sith Temple. It was a small airbus terminal, barely more than a few stands and a bench, and the generally acknowledged mouth of the Crimson Corridor. He watched the short goodbye between Gaya and her parents- no doubt there'd been a longer one before they arrived- and tried to probe Ardan Teta through the Force, as Bane had done. But Bane was stronger than he was; Witicca found that he couldn't get through. Ardan Teta was a being who- if the paperwork was correct- made a living fixing ships and speeders and doing the bookkeeping and accounting work for several local businesses, as well as co-managing the Kimorra with his wife. Yet somehow he had the ability, despite no formal training in the ways of the Force, to project and maintain incredible psychic defenses against beings who were- well, okay, certainly not Yodas or Vaders, Witicca thought, but still…_we're not exactly powerless, either._

"I can help with that," he said, taking pity on Gaya and lifting one of the two small duffel bags she had brought in addition to a worn blue backpack.

"Thanks," she said. She spoke in a very quiet voice, he noticed. He had to strain to hear her above the sound of the traffic.

"That's okay. We don't have any vehicles except a couple ships and fighters, and all those but one were commandeered by the Navy. So we'll have to walk. But it's not far." He shifted his weight. "So…what do you hope to get out of this experience, young Gaya?" He smiled down at her. "Don't worry, this isn't a formal interview."

"I don't know." She seemed to consider it. "Obviously, the main thing is I want to be away from my old school. I just need a place where I can graduate okay and be done with school."

"What will you do after you graduate?"

"Probably work at the bar full time. Maybe I'll try to go to university, but it's really expensive and I don't think I could get a scholarship. Ardan says I should make a big point of the Krandyn's so that they accept me for diversity or whatever. I guess he's right. But…I wish I didn't have to. I wish I could just be…like, a student. Instead of a 'student with a disability.'"

Witicca nodded. "You probably hear this a lot, but I do understand that a bit."

"Oh?" She sounded as if she was being polite, but he pressed on anyway.

"Yes," he elaborated. "You see, I happen to be gay."

She was quiet for a while, and that was how he knew it had sunk in. At last, she said, "Oh. Well…that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that."

He nearly laughed- although she wasn't looking directly at him (she was watching the ground, for things that might trip her up, he supposed) he could still see her face. "You can ask me any questions you have."

She hesitated, and then said, "Well, there is something I've always wondered."

"Go ahead."

"Do…people who are gay like aliens better if they don't look humanoid, or if they do?"

"It's a question of personal preference. I prefer more humanoid males- I'm gay and a homosexual, in case you were wondering. But I've met people who like species that don't look like us at all. It depends."

"And people in the Order don't give you a hard time about it?"

"At first, they did. But I'm pretty strong in the Force, so once I kicked a few asses everyone started being more accepting. And I've been there years, too, so people are used to me. Basically, once you're in with us, you're in for good. That was always something I preferred about us as opposed to the Old Sith or the Brotherhood or all them. We look after our own. United, we conquer; divided, we surrender, and all that…You know, I really think you're going to end up doing well here. We're all…well, we're a bit of a motley crew. We don't all have something technically wrong or different about us, but…none of us is really normal, either." He snorted. "Ha, if we were normal, we'd be _Jedi."_

They continued to walk. Witicca saw a few street people look up from the ground or whatever imaginary entity was holding their attention to squint, in the faint red-orange light that filtered down from the air canals far above, at the travelers. They wouldn't come close; when they'd first moved in, Darth Apathian and some of the apprentices had chased a few of them away from the Temple dumpster, and being chased by a Sith was not a great experience no matter what you happened to be on at the time. Darth Bane had put a stop to that sort of behavior towards the locals, but it was not a thing to be forgotten in a hurry. Now, the beggars avoided anyone who wore a lot of black.

At length, Witicca decided he had another question for the still quiet but now considerably more relaxed Gaya. "Gaya."

"Yeah?"

"You told me your main goal is to graduate secondary school. But the Temple's more than just a school. Have you thought if you're going to carry on with any Force training after you've fulfilled your academic obligations?"

"Um, no." She shrugged. "I mean, no, I haven't been thinking about that much. I've been trying not to, actually. I still think I don't have it in me. The Force, I mean. Even aside from the test results, I can't predict the future or lift stuff with my mind or get people to do what I want."

"Do you think you're going to fail?"

"With that part of it? I might, yeah." She spoke so casually of failure that he was surprised, and dismayed. For a while, he struggled for his response. Then he remembered the Question. The Question was fundamental to any Sith's identity; or rather, the way a Sith answered the Question determined who he, or she, was within the Order; within all orders.

He asked her, "What do you want?"

She was quiet awhile, and then she asked, "What do you mean? Like, what do I want right now?"

"No, I mean- if you could have anything, if you could do anything and succeed- what would you want? What's the one essential desire you have that is different from what everyone else wants?"

"Don't all Sith Lords just want power?"

"We're supposed to." Witicca peered up at a streetsign, almost totally covered in graffiti, to see how much farther it was. Not far. "Frankly, Gaya, it's not just about power. It's never just about the power." He stopped and turned to her. "So let me ask you again, Gaya Viviani, apprentice to the New Sith Order: what do you want?"

Still not meeting his eyes- but Darth Griminus hadn't done that either; it was a KD thing, Witicca knew- Gaya stopped beside him and considered the Question. At last, she said, "I think…I want…not to be afraid. Yeah. I want to not be afraid anymore."


	5. Luke

_The Sand Person always has another knife._ Seeing Darth Bane always caused New Jedi Master and New Republic Commander Luke Skywalker to reflect upon this regional and somewhat oddly specific Tatooine saying. It meant, according to his uncle, whose stepmother had been killed by a Tusken tribe, that you could never trust a Tusken- even when they'd sworn to you that they weren't armed and you'd patted them down, it was never a good idea to get one behind you. Luke felt, as a cosmopolitan, progressive ex-revolutionary and citizen of the New Republic, that this was probably unfair to the Tusken; however his own experience with them tended to lean toward his uncle's position.

The reason the idiom made him think of Bane was because the New Sith Lord allegedly carried a Tusken-wrought dagger in one of her boots, which were themselves Tusken-made- or, rather, _built_, or perhaps _forged_- from thick, stiff bantha leather which Bane had later dyed black, because a Sith has to have style. Metal sheets were sewn into the lining along the shin, as armor, and since these and the metal beading that decorated the boots always set off metal detectors in security screenings, the logic went, no one would notice the knife.

Or at least, people said that. "People" meaning, in this case, "Luke's ward/first apprentice Ken, who heard it from a couple of New Sith apprentices at a pub in the Orange District, which is where he went after he said he was going to study at the Senatorial library." Ken, at the extremely mature age of twenty-one, seemed to find the image of a female Sith with a dagger in her garter, or in that general area, a highly fascinating subject. Luke found it slightly unsettling, especially since, as Ken was Emperor Palpatine's grandson by an illegitimate half-alien offspring, Darth Bane was his aunt. That was what made it more disturbing than if, say, Jacen had gotten a crush on Bane. Of course, he and Jaina called her "Aunt Bane" at Leia's insistence, but she wasn't really related to them. Ken did not seem to have processed the fact that she was really related to him.

Now, he watched Darth Bane through a window in the door to Leia's office. He'd let her go ahead of him out of politeness, and also because he found he took a perverse pleasure in knowing that, in not being openly hostile, he was being the bigger person and killing the Sith with kindness. She was wearing worn black again, but in deference to the fact that she was meeting the Supreme Chancellor of the New Republic, she had pulled on a long dyed-black kirbli-weave skirt and blouse, and a bantha-leather kirdle decorated with silver and gemstone beads. It was Tusken clothing, what they apparently wore under the robes, hoods, and masks. The women, at least.

He was just starting to think to himself about his experience in the Jundland Wastes over a decade ago, when he had been knocked unconscious by a Tusken and met his Jedi master as a result, when he noticed Leia waving him in.

"Luke?" Oh no. His sister was using the tone that she used to pacify him after she had just made a political decision that was going to inconvenience him or the New Jedi in some way. "Remember the team you're sending to the old Jedi Temple? I'd like you to lead it personally."

Luke relaxed. That was no problem; he'd secretly wanted to go anyway, but Ken had been bothering him for more responsibility, as the learner with the most seniority. But then he realized Leia's anxiety ran through the Force even more strongly, and tensed for her next directive. "And," she was saying. "And, I'm asking Bane to lead a team from the New Sith."

Luke didn't bother to hide his indignation. "Leia, how can you- I know she's your friend, but that's _unacceptable_! It's _appalling_! She's a _Sith_! She's the reason we_ have_ to send a team to secure the Temple! The reason it's _deserted_!" He peered at Bane, determining her smugness level. To his mild surprise, he found her lips pursed and jaw set, anticipating the conflict.

"I think we'll have less of that 'You Sith disease' crap, Commander, if you don't mind," she said coolly. "Besides, by that logic_ you_ shouldn't be allowed inside either, on the grounds that your father did the actual slaughter."

"_It's different!"_

"Why?"

"_You're not a Jedi!"_

"The first Sith were Jedi. Besides, I was trained by Lord Vader, and aren't you always going on about how he turned back to the light and brought balance to the Force? That sounds quite Jedi-like to me."

"_You know_ you're not a Jedi!"

"And you are? The Jedi used to train kids for years from the time they were, like,_ two_! They always hated my master because he was 'too old'! Whereas you had, what, like _six months_ of training when you were _twenty_?"

"Both of you stop it." Now Leia was using the tone she reserved for arguing senators, or her children. "That's enough. Now, you both know we had been sending civilian- non-Force-using, I mean- patrols through the Temple every month or so. You know they're disappearing and we don't know why. At first we thought it was squatters, but we've sent some heavily armed squads in there, led by trained soldiers, and it's unlikely that street people could keep repelling them. Besides, we have the Temple under surveillance, and no one except our patrols has gone in or out, and that includes the service entrances in the downlevels. So Bane thinks the Temple could be housing some dark spiritual presence. Something malevolent. If that's the case, you'll need backup anyway, and backup that's comfortable with the Dark Side might help."

Luke raised an incredulous eyebrow. "You mean you think it's…_ghosts_?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot, there's no such thing as spirits on this plane of existence," snarled Bane. "Because _according to the Jedi_ there is no power in the universe except the Force, and we all know the Jedi know _everything_ about the universe. I mean, look how well they predicted the rise of the _Empire_-"

"_Dammit, Mara, I said that's enough!"_ Leia had apparently forgotten herself in her annoyance, and used the secular name she had known Bane by when they had met at school. "You two are going to see what, if anything, is going on at that Temple. Go pick your teams and assemble your equipment. And on the day, try not to act like my twins fighting over what holofilm we watch on family movie night."

An ashamed silence followed her remark. At last, Bane said, "Er, Chancellor, there is still the matter of the apprentice I told you about, the one with the individualized education plan-"

Leia nodded wearily. "Viviani. Yes, I'll see that all the paperwork is pushed through in time for her to be on your team. And you want to bring Jaina, too?"

"I hoped to. Didn't she tell you?"

"We…uh…haven't talked much lately." _Mostly yelling instead,_ thought Luke sadly. He'd hoped that he could soothe Jaina and Leia's relationship troubles once Jaina was a New Jedi. But now that she had insisted on the New Sith, he wasn't sure what would happen, except that matters would only get worse.

Leia sat back and looked up at them. "You are my brother and you are my oldest living friend. I trust you both implicitly, but I'm asking you to curb your argumentative tendencies for this one mission. For your apprentices. Is that understood?" She accepted their nods. "Then may the Force be with you. Both of you."


	6. The Temple

The transport, contributed by the New Jedi Order, dropped the teams off at an airbus depot a few blocks from the service entrance to the Temple that they would be using. It was unable to get closer; the space between buildings got too narrow, and besides, Darth Bane claimed, Commander Skywalker was afraid that the transport could get hijacked or stripped by locals. But Gaya thought Bane was probably making a crack about Skywalker being afraid of poor people; they probably weren't supposed to take her comment literally.

She had found herself a seat near the front of the transport for the trip, although she wondered how much good that anti-bullying tactic would do her now. Even if she was able to swallow her pride- what little she still felt that she had, anyway- and ask Bane or Commander Skywalker- and she was sure she'd never whine to him about any problems; he was _the_ Commander Luke Skywalker, after all- for help, they might ignore her, expect her to solve her own problems now that she was going to be a New Sith. Already, she was feeling fairly unsuited to the New Sith Order. She'd arrived at the school after having painted her nails her favorite shade of purple the night before. She'd thought it might help her confidence level. That first day of classes, a Twi'lek master named Apathian, with a body like a fitness coach, had asked her loudly, "Why the hell'd you bother painting your nails? You're going to ruin them in no time, here, and this isn't a beauty contest." In the middle of phys ed class, in front of the other apprentices. She'd tried to be respectful and smile through it, but a few tears had leaked out later in the bathroom the female apprentices used as a changing room. She was just glad that for now, she had her own room and only had to see people in class and at mealtimes. She didn't know any of the others, and they all seemed to know each other. She knew she should be talking to people, but the truth was that she was scared. That was pathetic, but it was true.

The transport docked, and she carefully folded the book she had been reading into her pack. It was an old-fashioned codex-style tome, printed on flimsiplast pages, but not hardcover, which made it lighter. It was her mother's old copy of Kamus' classic epic poem/opera _Ten Thousand Years of Darkness_. Gaya remembered her mother telling her all about the first time she had ever opened the book. "I never got far enough in school to study it, and my family wasn't readers. I didn't understand any of it at first, but I just read all those beautiful words…it got me through a lot, that book." Later, she and Ardan would sometimes read certain scenes to Gaya before bed, in lieu of a bedtime story or holovid. Ardan in particular read it best- he pronounced each word clearly, crisply, and elegantly, so that Gaya could almost taste the words in her own mouth. "It's a fairy tale," he explained. "It's the story of a very powerful, royal woman who loved a very poor, common man. And it really happened; it's about Empress Teta, who lived a very long time ago." And even though she suspected the Empress' life had not really been the stuff of operas, Gaya still loved the story.

Now, as they walked through the downlevels, Gaya glanced around at the other New Sith apprentices. There was Jaina Solo- Gaya was better with faces than names, but Jaina's parents, like Commander Skywalker, were famous. She was athletically slender, a year or so younger than Gaya but a few centimeters taller. Her long chestnut-brown hair was pulled back into a sort of elaborate braid behind her head. She wore a sleek black outfit that made her look like some kind of holofilm secret agent. The top showed her arms; one was decorated with a fiery-looking tattoo. She also wore an oppressive amount of eyeliner, apparently mimicking Bane's eye makeup.

There were two others selected to go- apparently Bane had decided that the Temple would make an excellent history field trip for those learners still in secondary school. One was a tall, prickly looking girl who wore mostly baggy black clothes, with a silver charm hanging from her utility belt that looked similar to the one on a chain around Bane's neck. She wore boots similar to Bane's as well, and carried a primitive-looking throwing knife in her belt. She had been introduced as Ranjana Tharssen, and her father was a member of Bane's mother's tribe, her mother a member of a neighboring Tusken clan. As the senior apprentice of their group, Bane had said that when no master was present, they would obey Ranjana. The other apprentice was Chad Divinian. Gaya didn't know much about him except that his father was rich, and that he'd come from some prep school on Andara. She also couldn't help thinking he wasn't bad to look at, either. She had seen him staring at her on the trip; once, he had grinned.

No one in the group, aside from the masters and Ranjana, who took it in stride, seemed to be comfortable with their surroundings. In fact, Gaya felt a sudden wave of anxiety, and a jolt went through her as she realized it was not her own. She was wary, of course, and nervous because at any minute she might have to make small talk with someone, especially Chad, but that was not unusual. Everyone else, including the Jedi team, seemed to be worried about being mugged or getting lost down in that overgrown alley, where even the sunlight couldn't find them.

"We'll use service and emergency staircases to make our way up to the foyer of the main level, and spread out from there," Commander Skywalker announced as they gathered in the loading dock.

"Why?" asked Bane. "If this place is being"- a second-long pause that Gaya picked up but wondered about- "_used by smugglers or anyone else_, we'll be pretty much exposed. If we stick to the back way, it's safer."

"This could be our only chance to see the Temple." Skywalker seemed testy, Gaya decided. So did Bane, but she always seemed a bit on edge, so it was harder to tell. "I want the apprentices- my apprentices, anyway- to see the entrance hall, the library, the council chamber, and the Room of a Thousand Fountains."

"This is a mission, not a tour," snapped Bane. "Look, Jedi, people have gone missing here. And the New Jedi may have parents lined up around the block who want to sign their kids up to be Padawans, but we at the New Sith have to be a bit more conservative with our students. So you can take yours anywhere you want, but we are taking the back ways. We'll use the main lifts because this place is too big to just take the stairs everywhere, but beyond that, we're not going anywhere that's not secure, not until we've swept it. Again, you can do what you like."

That made sense to Gaya, but Skywalker just replied, "Then it looks as if we'll meet up there. In the council chamber."

"Sounds fine to me."

"Good."

"Excellent."

"Be seeing you."

"And you."

"Call us if you have problems."

"Ha. You can call us if you have problems."

"Fine."

"Fantastic."

"May the Force be with you!" called Skywalker as he led his team onto one of the lifts.

"And also with you!" yelled Bane as the lift doors creaked shut. She looked around. "Okay. I'm going to divide you up in smaller groups, and we're going to sweep the level. Both groups have fifteen minutes. I'll take young Chad and Ranjana will take Jaina and Gaya. We'll meet back up here. We'll go this way, you three go that way. Any problems, call me on your comm. Okay, let's go."

"You know," said Ranjana as they began the sweep of the main level a few hours later. "We should introduce ourselves to Gaya. I know Jaina because she has stayed at our Temple before," she explained to Gaya. "But neither of us know you."

Gaya smiled politely. She knew Ranjana was just being responsible, but she still wanted to be nice. "My name is Gaya Viviani. I transferred here from public school." She didn't know what else to say- '_I was allowed to come here even though I have no midi-chlorians, because I was somehow able to zap two bullies in gym class?_ _Oh, and by the way, I have Krandyn's Disorder, which causes me to not understand your body language and facial cues, gives me crappy balance and coordination so that I am almost no use in a fight, I suspect, and causes me to become a nervous wreck every time I have to have conversations like this, which makes people think I am a bore with anxiety problems. There, don't you want to be my friend now?'_

Her brain felt like a blank computer screen, and she could feel her throat closing up out of nervousness. She took a breath and asked, "So…Ranjana. That's a pretty name. Um…where are you from?"

"The Thar tribe of the Dune Sea. On Tatooine," explained Ranjana. "The Tusken, you know? Like Master Bane. Although my mother is Chalahavi, not Thar. That's why my hair is black, not yellow."

"But Master Bane has red hair."

"It was from her father's side of the family, I suppose. All the Thar are fair, and all the Chalahavi are dark. Outsiders just don't know because of the robes and helmets we wear."

"So, um, Master Bane found you when she…visited her family?"

"She got my name that way. But at that time, I was living in Mos Eisley. I was supposed to be going to the settlers' school so that I could use my learning to help the tribe." Ranjana seemed sad. "I was going to go to law school in the Core at one point." She _was_ sad; Jaina was patting her shoulder. Gaya hung back- she didn't know Ranjana well; was it all right to comfort her using touch, as Jaina was doing? She decided not to ask Ranjana what had changed her plans; she was desperately curious, but pressing Ranjana would likely make her feel even worse.

"I'm sorry," she said instead. "I didn't mean to, you know, dredge anything up."

"It's all right, that time is past now." Ranjana wiped a solitary tear that had trickled from her left eye. "I just don't like to think of it…the shame. You see, what had happened was…I trusted the wrong people in that city. And I tried a thing I shouldn't have- I lost focus on my task. I tried spice."

Gaya felt on firmer ground now; her mother had been a death stick addict and had managed to kick the habit for good after a few months of effort, starting when she learned she was pregnant with Gaya. It had been hard- she had had no money for detox or rehab, and no support, being an impoverished, barely-legal runaway, dropout, and hooker. Even today, she blamed herself for being addicted in the first place, or for not being able to quit sooner. She thought Gaya's Krandyn's was her fault; that the drug had caused it. "It's not your fault. Some people never get addicted to drugs, and some people do even if they just try them once. And the dealers tell you all kinds of stuff to get you to use drugs, and I've heard spice is really bad now because the type they sell is more concentrated."

Jaina laughed. "Jeez, Gaya, you know an awful lot about drugs!" She looked at Gaya's confused expression and smiled apologetically. "Sorry. I was just kidding."

"Oh, that's okay." Gaya's face burned with embarrassment. Of course Jaina had been kidding. She should have laughed, too. "No, it's just that my family and I, we live near the top of the Orange District, and my mom owns a cantina, so she has experience with, you know, that world. But she doesn't let any dealing go on in our bar. She and my dad- well, my stepfather really- they're really strict about that. There's a lot of drugs in our neighborhood, though."

The conversation hung unfinished in the air, and Gaya wondered what she had said that was wrong. Yes, it was hard to respond to a statement like that, but that was what they had been talking about, wasn't it? It occurred to her belatedly that maybe Jaina's joke had been meant to lighten the mood, maybe to shift the conversation topic. Gaya looked at the other two girls. Jaina looked as awkward as she felt, though Gaya couldn't be sure- she'd gotten much better at telling these things, but she still made mistakes- but Ranjana looked thoughtful, and less sad.

Then Jaina said something about some political struggle involving the Tatooine government and the New Republic, which concerned the Tusken in some way. Gaya was not politically unaware, but she knew little about politics outside of Coruscant's system, and even that was only what she saw on the news or heard her parents discussing. She added comments where she could so that the two others wouldn't think she was ignoring them, and let her mind wander as the conversation gradually went away from her, and she was outside again. She was used to it. She looked around the corridor they were walking down- it was higher and more architecturally interesting than those below it, but it was so silent it was creepy- their footsteps echoed on the tiles, and the lights, powered by an emergency fueling system, were dim and pulsating, bathing everything in a sickly greenish glow.

She'd once seen an old pre-Republican holofilm about the Jedi Temple. Some teenage smugglers had broken in, trying to evade capture by the Imperial Navy. They had spent one night in the abandoned Temple, during which time period all four had died in various gruesome, unrealistically staged ways at the hands of vengeful Jedi ghosts.

They hadn't been allowed to shoot the movie inside the real Temple- she remembered reading that somewhere, yes, they'd had to use one of the Massassi temples on the moons of Yavin. She'd always wondered why not; wouldn't that make it all the more powerful as an anti-Jedi propaganda piece? Ardan had agreed that it was strange. They had actually spent time wondering together and inventing possible reasons, each one sillier than the last.

Ardan always maintained that the Emperor was secretly keeping something there- a mad wife, a cloning facility, a laboratory devoted to discovering the secrets of the dark side. "Or maybe his unholy Sith Master's undead ghost," he'd chuckled. "Maybe that's where the idea for the movie came from."

Gaya saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned. Nothing was there. She shivered, feeling eyes on her back. She really wished she wasn't thinking about ghosts right now.

The Temple felt old, and cold, and very quiet. It occurred to her that after years of silence, their footsteps and voices must seem as loud as an avalanche to anything- anyone- else who might be here.

She saw it again. "Something's there." Her voice echoed in her own ears.

The other two turned. "What did you say, Gaya?" asked Jaina.

"I thought I saw something. At the mouth of this hallway. Behind us."

"We checked down there," Jaina objected.

Gaya made a decision. "I'll go myself. I'll be back in a second. I won't go far. I just have to check."

"That's not-" began Ranjana, but Jaina shrugged. "Do you want us to come?" she asked.

"Not if you don't want to. I'll be right back." They had already checked it; there was probably no danger, she'd just look and then not be scared…

She ran down the hall. Now that she was on her own, she wished Jaina or Ranjana had come. But she could handle this. She didn't need any more normal people babysitting her…

She turned a corner, and there he was, in front of her. A boy- a young man- around her age, dark-skinned, with unkempt black hair. For a long moment, they stared at each other. Then, Gaya looked down, noticing for the first time the blaster in the boy's hand. To her further surprise- and relief- he bent carefully, set it at his feet, and raised his hands slowly before she had time to panic. "It's out of cartridges," he explained shortly, sounding as if he was unused to talking.

Dimly, Gaya heard the shouting behind her. Ranjana and Jaina were calling her name. "I'm over here!" she yelled, voice bouncing off the walls, not taking her eyes off the boy as she reached down to take his blaster.

Jaina found her first. "Come on, Gaya, we've got to get up to the library, Bane found something-" She fell silent as she saw the boy for the first time. Then, she said, "Gaya, could you go get Ranjana?"

"Me?" Gaya found that she resented being assigned the role of errand girl, when she was the one who'd found the intruder in the first place. "You know where she is better than I do."

Jaina nodded, as she saw the blaster in Gaya's hand. "Okay." To the boy, she said, "You're coming with us."


	7. The Boy

Leia Organa Solo's real name was technically still "Leia Organa." The "Solo" had never been legally added- she'd kept her own last name, as she and Mara had long ago promised each other- budding teenage feminists that they were, alone in a sea of spoiled politicians' daughters looking for rich Imperial husbands- that they would. The HoloNet and the public knew her as "Organa Solo" because they had assumed she had taken Han's name. She had never corrected them because to do so would make her constituents uncomfortable- to them, it wouldn't seem modern or emancipated, but cold and unfeminine. Was she ashamed of her husband, that she didn't want to take his name? Why wouldn't she want to share a last name with her children? Pundits would speculate about her devotion to her husband and family, would accuse her of frigidity and emotional negligence. So the name placard on her desk in the Senate building read "Leia Organa," but most people knew her as "Leia Organa Solo." She had accepted this.

Right now, Chancellor Leia Organa peered through the viewport/ersatz mirror at the interrogation room within. It was gray. It contained a plastoid table and two chairs. One was occupied by a boy of fifteen years or so, of average height, looking underfed. He wore a suit of torn black underarmor and his feet were bare. His skin was the color of strong, milky tea. His face was nearly covered by a full head of greasy black hair. But it was a face Leia knew- a face she had seen before. On the planet Kamino. The night they had liberated that celestial globe of constant hurricane, she had seen hundreds- thousands- of that face; confused, youthful and frightened, yet hardened with a resolve- even a calm courage- that went far beyond their apparent years.

"He's a clone," she murmured.

Her brother Luke nodded. "Bane says so. She'd know, considering…her history. And his blaster is the standard Imperial issue."

"Operating number?"

"He says he doesn't have one, anymore."

"Anymore?"

"He claims he was erased from the system, after his defects became known."

"What defects?"

"A normal rate of aging, apparently. He really is the age he looks. That's the only one he would tell me. But I think there is something else." Luke's brow knit. "The Force…behaves strangely around him. I…can't explain it. I have to work on it."

"So why keep him alive?" Leia mused aloud. "Why not euthanize him? And how was he able to get to the Jedi Temple?"

"He won't talk to me. He won't talk to anyone."

"Well, no wonder. You people put him in a cell like some thugger who got caught trying to jack a senator's speeder," remarked Bane loudly, sweeping into the hallway in a flurry of ragged black cloth. She rubbed one heavily kohl'ed eye. "Sorry, I got here as soon as I could. I found out that Darth Torturian has been ordering all these adult movies on the HoloNet on the Order's credit chip, so I had to get that sorted- did you say he's not talking?"

"Yes," said Leia, ignoring her brother's vigorous head-shaking behind Bane's back. "Do you think you can help?"

"I have an idea. I can try my best." She, too, peered at the young man. "Kriffing damn, that does take me back. Look at him, Leia- doesn't he remind you of Dack? From school?"

Leia nodded. She noticed that someone had given the clone a thin blanket, and a mug of something, probably tea. Still, as she viewed again the barren room he sat in, she could not help but be struck by a fit of abrupt panic. The sight of the gray walls and fluorescent lighting caused a tightness in her chest, and suddenly she had to think through every breath, had to consciously order her own lungs to inflate fully. Her stomach felt as if it had been carved from a stone, and she felt sweaty, dry-mouthed, nauseous. Horror rose in her throat; she forced it down.

She realized what it was. The interrogation room had reminded her- unconsciously, over a decade later- of her detention cell on the Death Star.

Bane sat down casually opposite the boy. He eyed her. She knew he recognized her. She hadn't been the Imperial infantry's top priority as far as protection was concerned, back in the Emperor's court, but she'd been on the list of personalities all clones should know and should be ready to take an assassin's bolt for.

At last, she said, "Doesn't it taste like piss?"

He looked up from the mug, taken by surprise. "What?"

"The tea. Isn't it like bantha piss?" She sat back. "I remember when I had to come down here to bail out Torturian and some of the others, right after we got here. You'd think that after the crooks in Mos Eisley, they'd have more common sense about choosing sabacc partners, but no. And then they tried to pay off the debt selling death sticks to an undercover vice agent. What a party that was." She sighed. "But anyway, I remember that they called Chancellor Organa's office like I said to, and then this one kid straight out of the academy who'd been giving me airs all night, once he realized I knew the Chancellor, started trying to kiss up. And he brought me some tea, and I remember it was awful. So I wondered if yours was any better."

He silently shook his head no.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Don't you mean my operating number?" She could detect no sarcasm in his voice or facial expression.

"No, I mean your name. I know you have one; I never met a trooper who didn't, not even one who was 'defective.'" She put air quotes around the word "defective."

It was his turn to sit back and fix her with an appraising look. She was struck by his absolute lack of servility; it didn't bother her, but all the other clone troopers she had ever met were either genuinely obedient, depending on the attitude of the superior they were interacting with, or else submissive with undercurrents of condescension and purposeful stupidity, which most officers went their whole careers without picking up on. Imperial troopers were genetically engineered to follow orders, but that didn't mean they had to like it.

Something was different about this boy. Part of it was the experience of being an individual among identical cells in the organism that was the Imperial army, she felt- this boy's 'defects' made him different, although he would never have been treated as such by his comrades. But part of it…she couldn't say. Some trauma worse than the experience of battle- something that would shake a trooper deeply. And 'somethings' like that were hard to find.

"If you know about our names," he replied emotionlessly, "Then you know I'll never tell you mine."

She looked into his brown eyes. They were deep, and unique. All their eyes, though the same color and shape, were different. "You know, Commander Cody and his squadron were my first Royal Guard." She saw his surprise. All clones knew Commander Cody. As the trooper who had served alongside the Jedi general Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Clone Wars, he and his men were legendary for the battles they had won in the name of the Republic- and, in time, the Empire. "It's true. They were sent to Tatooine on a courier mission and found me with help from the local garrison. They tried to get permission for my mother to accompany me to Coruscant, and when they couldn't, they took me themselves. They tried to make my transition as gentle as they could. I lost track of them for a while when they were sent offplanet." She smiled. "The next time I met one of that squad was when I met Dack in prep school. Chancellor Organa and I both knew him, actually. I know you know him, too. Admiral Dack, I think that's his rank now. He's the first clone ever to be made an admiral.

"And you're like him," she continued softly. "I heard the Jedi Skywalker saying the Force goes haywire around you, and he didn't understand why because he won't let himself consider the simplest explanation; he believes it's impossible. But I know why, because I knew Admiral Dack, better than any other non-clone ever could. And that's what the Force did around him. You all know why he was given an education and allowed to rise as far as he has. Perceptive, intuitive, clever- the higher-ups called him that. But you all knew the real reason. You knew he wasn't guessing, on the battlefield, what would happen next based on his intellect or simple intuition. You knew that he _saw_ what was going to happen next." She shook her head. "I was apprenticed to my master Lord Vader by then, but we were doing the training in secret and I was sent away to school, and anyway he was an apprentice too. So I didn't know much. But I tried to give Dack what training I could. I don't know if he uses it now. Probably not."

"I'm from that squadron," he whispered, eyes wide as saucers. "I didn't know Cody, he died before they decanted me, but I met Dack once." He leaned in, apparently trying not to be heard by the microphones in the room. "My name is Cody."

"You were named after the commander." He nodded.

"It's a good name. I imagine it's intimidating sometimes, having a name like that."

"Yes, Your Grace. It can be."

Bane waved a hand. "There's no need for any of that 'Your Grace' crap. Princess Mara Jade was pronounced legally dead almost twenty years ago; it's a matter of Imperial record. If you have to call me anything, 'Master Bane' is sufficient." She folded her hands on the table. "Now, Cody, I need you to tell me what you were doing in the Temple. And frankly, any other mysteries you can clear up surrounding what we found there, that'd also be a help. Why were you at the Temple?"

He swallowed, and replied at last, "I was brought there, Master Bane."

"By who?"

"His Majesty, Emperor Palpatine." Bane probed the boy in the Force; he wasn't lying. "Me and two others from my unit. Spaz and Burninator."

"Burninator?" Bane recalled the trooper- like all the rest, he had seemed to tower over her when she'd met him at the age of twelve. He was gruff with her, had taken longer to warm up to her than the others. She still remembered his Mandalorian facial tattoo, a tribute to the Mandalorian armor designs that the clones' uniforms were based on. The foul smell of the thick black cigars he smoked, which he rolled by hand. He hadn't said much. According to one of the others, possibly Kos, he'd received his current name from his reputed enjoyment of and skill with weapons involving fire. And it was true that in addition to the standard laserblaster all troopers were issued, Burninator was wont to carry a flamethrower strapped across his back when conflict was expected.

Kos had said that where there were legends about Cody, there were rumors about Burninator.

Cody the younger was nodding. "Yeah. There was this…thing. On Ord Mantell. There were Rebels hiding in this village way out beyond this mountain chain, in a valley. At least Intelligence said there were. We never found any, I don't think, not actual Alliance people. But the village was on this hill, and around it was this swampy plain…it was just really bad. There were people shooting at us, so we shot back…but they thought it wasn't Rebels, just local people…it started to storm, and in the field…we had mud to our waists. Some guys slipped…some drowned. So Burninator pulled out his flamethrower- I never saw him use it before then- and he pointed it at the village…" The boy's voice trailed off.

At last, in a small, young voice, he said, "So they found out. The higher-ups. And the local government was pissed, I guess."

Bane tried not to dwell on the picture in her imagination…the tall, broad-shouldered, muscular figure in muddy, barely-white armor, pointing the long black tube and trigger- which looked similar to a Tusken pellet rifle, but wasn't- at the cluster of lights amid the wet, dark cacophony of the storm. His helmet was off for some reason, and the tiny orange spark of his cigar lit his features a moment before the night became as bright as day…"And who was Spaz?" she asked.

"He was…we didn't know. He didn't…couldn't talk. He would…spaz out. Not like seizures. He'd get…frustrated, we thought. We thought he was frustrated. Kos thought it was that thing they talk about now…Krandyn's Disorder. Only really, really bad. We thought he had that."

"So m- the Emperor took you, Burninator, and Spaz to the Temple. Why didn't we find them? Where are they?"

"Dead, Master." She saw the faint shudder go through him.

Burninator was dead. She was not sure how she felt about that. "How did they die?"

He shook his head. "I can't."

"Why can't you tell me? Did their deaths have to do with…what we found in the great hall?"

"I don't know." He wouldn't look at her. "I don't know what you found, Master."

"Of course you do. You lived in that place for years. There's no way a…_perceptive_ young person like you didn't notice a great heap of humanoid skulls in the middle of the floor." She leaned forward. "Did you kill them, Cody?"

"No!" His indignation was completely expected. No trooper killed another trooper except out of mercy; if a trooper was fatally wounded, and in considerable pain. It was, Bane knew, part of the Code.

"Then who did? Why did the Emperor take you to an abandoned center of the Force instead of just killing you all? Who's been bringing you whatever you were eating to stay alive all those years? Who piled up all those bones, and left those stains on the floor?" She raised an eyebrow. "Who do you expect me to believe it was- Jedi ghosts?"

He leaned forward and his voice became a whisper. "Master, please. You don't understand. If I tell you…if I answer those questions…" She saw naked fear on his face for the first time. "Master, if I tell you what you want to know…I'm going to be next. The…_thing_ that killed them is going to get me. And you can't catch it, or kill it, or lock it up. It's going to find me, no matter what you do. And then it's going to find you."

Bane stood up. She didn't disbelieve the boy, but she still tried to project the cockiness she knew she usually exuded. "Well then, soldier, we'll have to take you to the one place I know that's totally safe. Well…not from vandals, I guess, or squatters. Or burglars. Or certain gangbangers and drug dealers. Or government inspectors. But, generally, it's pretty much safe from anyone- aside from them- who might want to hurt you."


	8. The Secret Senses

To be Anzati…

…is a little like having Krandyn's Disorder. Humans- humans without that sensory/developmental disorder, as KD is classified in most of the psychotherapeutic texts that have been written about it, which is not many- are nearly deaf, nearly blind, hardly able to smell, taste, or feel. This is because their minds are able to screen sensations; to wade through the sea of sensory input that their nervous systems churn out every second, and to decide which information they need to know, and which information is important.

Most humans are totally unaware of this. The ancient Sith, Lord Revan, who was brighter than most of his contemporaries- and successors, for that matter- and did not dismiss meditation as the trivial pastime of flaky, long-haired Jedi, observed this phenomenon. "_Close_ _thou thy eyes, and stop up thine ears,_" reads a recent translation of his work (discovered in the apartments of the late Emperor Palpatine on Byss). "_Realize the temperature of the air, the texture of the raiment upon thy body. Therein lieth the power of the dark: for the eyes open widest in the gloom beneath the mountain, and all the secret senses, which the light of day drowned out, make themselves known in the dark of the night."_ This passage has been interpreted by most modern authorities, including Darth Bane II (secular name: Maregeode Tharssen-Palpatine), to be an admonishment toward apprentices to meditate for a greater awareness of the universe and the Dark Side. But it is also the account of a man who, for a few moments, experienced the sensory rush of a complete lack of nervous-system-screening.

Humans with Krandyn's experience this all the time, to varying degrees, according to the "severity" of their KD; according to how "high/low functioning" they are. The world is a flood- or maybe a storm- of information with little sequence or order to it. This may be one reason for the social awkwardness and ineptitude of those with Krandyn's. How can you pay attention to the twitch of a facial muscle or the twinkle in an eye when the eye is a brilliant, crazily moving, imposing gem, when the face is a spastic canvas of motions, and when these sensations are only a few out of the flood of all the secret senses, no longer secret, heading your way?

This is true for the Anzati, too. It may actually be worse; they are telepathic and mildly telekinetic creatures even without the Force, giving them one extra sensory portal. But they've had millennia to evolve, to teach each other how to deal with the sensory rush. You sometimes see individual Anzati sucked under the current- out in 'civilization,' they're statistically more likely than other humanoid species to suffer alcohol and drug addictions, and once evaluated by the 'experts,' they seem to have a higher rate of psychological disorders. But as a society, as a culture and as a people (however humble and seemingly unobtrusive), the Anzati don't struggle through the storm- they ride it.

To be Vetala Linxo…

…is to be young, Anzati, and recently female. She's halfway through adolescence, having telepathically "chosen" her gender at its start. All Anzati children are born hermaphrodite, and during puberty, they decide on a gender and activate the appropriate hormone secretions. Of course, as any Anzat will tell you, it's less a decision and more a discovery.

Young Linxo is worried that she discovered wrong.

Surrounded by the details of her world- the sickly yellow- and red-brown of the stiff, tall grass; the dull black rocks that jut skyward; the gravelly soil; the gray-ivory of distant skeleton trees, scraping the bruise-colored sky, and clumps of gnarled coniferous woods; the distant mirror-lake- Linxo is uneasy. Her thoughts are back at her _uzo_, still processing the conflict with Xiani from that morning. They are processing her feelings for Wemei, who will never love her back, and they are suffering remorse for her failures, which only seem to become more frequent- her aggressiveness, and her insanity. The clanmothers don't say it, but they know that's what it is. Linxo knows that's what it is.

Often, it's a thing that males contract. In fact, Linxo has never heard of any insane females.

Except for one- and that one female was not Anzati. And that is another thing she is pondering. Worrying about.

She doesn't want to leave the uzo, not now. Not when her clan- her village, her school, her family- may need every son and daughter it has. To defend what is theirs, from a threat they will not talk about.

But she does not want to die- to cease after having barely begun- not even for the uzo.

It is the only place she has ever been. She loves it there. She hates it there.

She is afraid to leave, and she is afraid not to.

And then she is frozen, paralyzed with shock and instincts of self-preservation, dropping to her knees in the grass, letting it disappear over her head. She is stretched taut, listening, barely breathing, adrenaline flowing, her own blood pounding in her ears.

Linxo is frozen, down among all the other small creatures- the rodents, the small toads, the insects and snakes- whose only defense is to hide and wait.

She is frozen because she has felt the ship come down.


	9. The People Under the Mountain

Anzat's air smelled strange, Gaya thought. It was like the faint scent you got, even on Coruscant, before it rained. But there were elements, too, of the rotting fruit and vegetables from the markets and food stalls, about to be thrown out in the dumpsters, or already there. Gaya supposed that must be the decaying grass, wood, and leaves in the rocky mud beneath her feet. The ground was uneven and slippery; she found that she could stabilize herself somewhat using the basic Force-training she had received before they got off-planet, but she still would rather have had something physical to grab onto.

At least this air was different from the stale, nosebleed-dry air on the ship. It was cooler and wetter, with a wind that rustled through the grass and blew their hair into their faces. Gaya had never experienced the wind before, except from passing transports exceeding the speed limit. She found herself beginning to smile.

"Pretty cool, huh, Gaya?" She looked around; it was that boy, Chad Divinian. He was grinning toothily at her. She tried to smile back, but she was nervous- and beyond that, there was something about his attitude that made her want to slap him. She knew he was just trying to be nice, but she could not shake the feeling of revulsion- something about his tone of voice, the way he was smiling…but she didn't know. Maybe she was just nervous around him. He wasn't unattractive.

"Bet you've never been offworld before, Gaya," he was saying. "This must be pretty cool for you, huh?"

_He's just trying to be nice…_ "Yeah, um, it's pretty cool," she managed, face burning. "It's kind of …dark, though. It looks stormy. I always thought clouds were supposed to be all, you know, fluffy and white." She tried to sound jovial about it, but he still seemed to lose interest in the conversation, and walked off toward the circle of apprentices by the ship's gangplank. After a moment of indecision, Gaya headed that way, too.

It had been years since she'd even considered the possibility of leaving Coruscant during her lifetime, because she'd known Niama and Ardan couldn't afford trips like that. But now that she was offplanet, she realized she had always imagined going with her parents. As it was, she was, once again, afraid- of being left behind, of getting lost, or of looking like a baby in front of the others. Since she had found the clone boy, Cody, the newest addition to the Temple, Jaina and Ranjana had been even more friendly. But this was her first real contact with Chad. As for Cody, he barely spoke to anyone except Bane.

What had changed in her? She wondered. Her mind went back to Niama and Ardan's five-year anniversary- not since they were married, they hadn't been married then, but since they had started seeing each other. She'd been about seven. Ardan had saved up, and his present to Niama had been three discount tickets to the Opera House. Gaya, he had explained, was a big girl, and so he was sure she could be trusted to be on her best behavior. Gaya had been thrilled- at getting to dress up, even wearing one of her mother's necklaces; at staying up late and missing school the next day so that she could sleep in; at getting to participate in such a cultured, grown-up activity as going to the opera.

The performance had been Kamus' Ten Thousand Years of Darkness. Banned during Palpatine's regime, it was one of the piece's first Core performances in over two decades. Gaya hadn't known that, of course. But she knew the poem well for her age, so she had been able to follow it somewhat. There had been bright lights and amazing stage effects, grand costumes and dramatic, transporting music. She hadn't understood most of it, looking back, but she had loved it all the same.

But what she really remembered was the intermission. Niama had taken her out into the lobby to use the refresher, and then she and Ardan had gone to buy a playbook as a souvenir. _Stay where you can see us,_ she had told Gaya, who, after a night surrounded by people, had begun to get antsy. Looking back, she could have been more specific, considering how literal-minded Gaya had been back then.

Because Gaya found that if she just climbed behind a curtain and under a velvet rope, and then went up a few stairs, she could still see a fraction of them, if she craned her neck and peered through the curtain just the right way. And then she was able to look around. There were discarded costumes, sets, and props. Above her, in the dim, purplish light, she could make out the catwalks used by the stage crew, and wished she could climb up and look down from them. Around her hung a forest of heavy black curtains, and the world was dark, with colored lights in the distance, glowing around the edges of the objects like strange halos. It was frightening, but grand.

With the help of a very patient usher, Niama and Ardan had found her lying on her back under the great digitized pianoforte in the back corner. Her parents had been upset, and she had cried a little because she didn't understand why they were mad; she had been able to see them, had known where they were the whole time. They'd calmed down after the last act.

She'd always been a wanderer, an adventurous child. She had never been happy staying with the group, waiting for everyone else to catch up before moving ahead. She had always wanted to know what was _beyond_; she had never used to be afraid of the unknown. _What happened to me?_

She brought herself back to the present and forced herself to listen to what Bane was saying. "Consider this your first social studies lesson of the school year," the New Sith Master was announcing in her usual booming tones. "A field trip to a genuine Anzati _uzo. _Some of you may know the Anzati from the outpost and smugglers' den on the far side of this planet. These people are not like them. They don't have contact, by and large, with the world outside their own clans and the communities immediately surrounding them. Many of them have never seen non-Anzati before. Some of them have gone their whole lives without leaving tribal territory. Technologically, they're so primitive that they make the Tusken look like Kaminoans. But as you'll find out, they need our so-called 'civilization' like they need a hole in the head." She grinned. It was a strange grin, Gaya reflected- the Master's somewhat garish taste in lipstick and her Sith tattoos combined to make it look gloating, maybe even predatory. But even though Bane dressed like some kind of twilighter living a housing-optional lifestyle, Gaya felt more natural around her than any teacher had made her feel in years.

"Oh, and one other thing." Bane motioned the apprentices into a defensive huddle, sliding Gaya, who had been hanging back, effortlessly in between Jaina and Cody in the circle. In a softer voice, suddenly more serious, she continued. "Now I'm not going to assume this is true for all of you, but I remember what it's like to be a teen with Force-sensitivity. You've got an extra sense other people don't have. Sometimes, you catch yourself laughing at them in your head; their world is so small to you; they're practically deaf and blind by comparison, and it seems insane that they could ever presume to be an authority on anything. Sometimes you think no one can touch you. Don't bother looking indignant or self-righteous, 'cause you've all felt it at least once if you're honest with yourselves. I don't care. But hear this: if you pull any of that crap with the Anzati, I'll personally escort you back to this ship, put my boot so far up your ass that you'll get mud in your colon, and then lock you in the brig, and leave you until the rest of us are done here. And not just because I won't let you embarrass this Order when we're trying to build a galactic reputation. It's because I won't let you endanger yourselves and each other. The Anzati may look simple, but they didn't preserve their culture through four galactic wars and two despotic regimes by playing games. They expect you to behave like adults, because that's what their teenagers do. Now if anyone doesn't think they can act their age, _now's the time_." Gaya looked around. Jaina looked impatient to get going, although she could be wrong about that, of course, and Cody just seemed resigned. Chad looked happy in a way that made Gaya feel warm inside and sick at the same time. Ranjana was focused on Bane, waiting for orders.

Bane nodded briskly. "Okay. Follow me, and if you get separated try to get up high, so you can see the ship and go back and wait inside it. You'll be all right, and I'll come back for you when I can. Don't try to find us again or stay in the fields after dark. There could be animals and stuff roaming round. This is one of the last wild places in the known galaxy, you know." She started off into the grass. "And have your cams and whatever else out. Your parents are going to want souvenirs and evidence of your 'enrichment'."

Chad sidled up behind Gaya as she walked. For a while, he just walked, and Gaya, snapping digital images with the cam her parents had bought her, began to feel a little uncomfortable.

At last, he remarked, "Nice cam, Gaya." Gaya looked down at it. The cam was an old model, and secondhand, but it did the job just fine. She looked back up at Chad, and realized he was giving her that same strange grin. It was still very possible that it meant nothing, but…that was what she'd thought about those boys in phys-ed, wasn't it? It was time to take a chance. So what if she was wrong and he got pissed? He'd understand eventually if he was at all sensitive- he'd see that as far as social signals, she was flying in the dark, and she needed to fly defensively because anything could be out there. He could be being nice, or he could be making fun of her to her face, and as a Sith, she shouldn't have to take that anymore. Couldn't take that anymore. The not-knowing was worse than the actual harassment.

She hoped she was wrong about Chad. At school, she'd hardly liked any boys, and none of them had been at all interested in her. She'd hoped that would change eventually with coming here- maybe Force-sensitive boys cared more about what you were like on the inside than normal ones did.

And if he never understood…so what? She didn't need to be friends with everyone in the galaxy.

She hoped he understood, though.

"Hey." Her voice sounded distant in her own ears, and she realized she was nervous. He had begun to walk away- his back was to her, so she couldn't see his face- so she said it louder. "_Hey- Chad."_

He didn't turn, so she ran/stumbled through the bracken until she'd drawn up alongside him. "_Hey_. Look at me."

He did, radiating- even to her crappy, KD'd social radar- angelic innocence. "What's wrong, Gaya?"

"You know, my cam is old, but I like it." Her throat felt dry, but she kept talking. "You know why I like it? Because my parents gave it to me. And it wasn't my birthday or anything. And they don't have a lot of money for presents." She couldn't read his face, but she was no longer trying to. "See, my parents _work_ for a living."

He gave her a look that she wasn't sure about, except that it wasn't a 'wounded' look. "Uh, hey, whatever."

"Hey Chad, kriff the hell off," called Jaina, running up.

"Hey, it's not me with the problem. I'm just walking, and she's the one who comes and starts giving me this weird speech about her parents. I mean, Gaya here _really_ likes her parents, which is sweet, I guess, even though she's like fourteen. Whatever. But I think she's got some problem with rich people, so she started harassing me-"

Jaina cut him off. "Chad, you know what you're doing. Now kriff off or I'll get Aunt Bane to kick you out on your ass." She grinned at Gaya. "You know he's only here because he's been kicked out or waitlisted at every prep school in the galaxy, and Uncle Luke wouldn't take him. Thank gods he's got the minimum midi-chlorian concentrations to qualify here, or I don't know what his daddy would do. Maybe he'd have to go to _public school."_ Gaya couldn't help but laugh, not only at the way Jaina said the words- and how true it was, about public school being an awful fate- but at the thought of Chad at her old school. They'd steal his fancy gadgets and beat him up for his gelled hair and tailored clothes, which they'd think were "gay." She'd never been a hotshot on campus, but at least she'd survived. Mostly.

Chad snorted and gave a half-shrug. "Whatever," he said again, and sauntered off.

Gaya looked for something to say. "I totally should have done that with him sooner."

"Yeah, I kind of wondered about that. You seemed smart enough to know that whole 'ignore them and they'll go away,' thing is a myth."

"Of course it is." Gaya decided to take another chance. "You know, I did something like this once. More extreme, I guess, but I'm not sorry for it. Maybe I should be, but I'm not."

"What'd you do? If it's not too personal."

The ground had grown less grassy and more gravelly. Boulders and piles of rubble dotted the plain. Gaya trained her eyes on them, away from Jaina. "I went to the Jedi Temple to get the test done. For midi-chlorians. I don't have any. And Bane tested me again before I came here, so it's not the test."

"But you're here."

"Yeah…a few days after the test, I was in phys-ed class. I always had a bad time in that class because I'm not coordinated and I don't get sports. The teacher thought I was lazy, so she didn't help, and it made me hate the class even more. And there were these boys- they got all around me. They were sort of playing this keep-away game. With me. And one of them saw this-" she pulled out Ardan's chain from under her shirt- "and he tried to touch it. And I was so sick of it. I was close to crying, but I knew I couldn't cry, not again, not then. And it's like…at that moment…" she struggled to find words that didn't make her sound sadistic, and gave up. "Right then…I wanted them to leave me alone. But I wanted more than that. I wanted them to pay. I wanted to hurt them. I told my parents and the principal it was an accident, but that's only half-true. I wanted to hurt them, and my hands were out like this…" She spread her fingers protectively over her torso, palms facing out at the Anzat wilderness. "This electricity came. Out of my fingers. And while it did, I was…somewhere else."

"What was it like?"

"Cool and blue. Calm. Like being underwater. And for a few seconds, while I was there…it felt so good. I felt satisfied, and peaceful, and safe. I had no regrets."

They were quiet for a while, their boots scraping exposed bedrock the only sounds. At last, Jaina said, "Then you must be Force-sensitive. I mean, kriff the tests. That's Force-lightning."

"I guess so."

Jaina nodded confidently. "Yeah, I mean, science doesn't have an answer for everything. It's the Force. Like, Uncle Luke calls it an 'energy field' and tries to find all these quantum explanations for it, like it's gravity or something. But it's the Force. It's beyond our limited understanding."

"I want it to be like that. I don't want to think that eventually, we'll just know everything about the universe. It would feel kind of sad. And it's like…how would we ever do things like write fiction or tell stories again? How would we ever imagine things again?"

"You don't think we could still do that?"

"No, I think subconsciously everyone sort of believes in the stories they tell. It's like how people feel about dying. They know they're going to someday, but they don't really feel like they are, and that's how they can keep eating and sleeping and stuff every day. Otherwise it would feel like wasted effort." Gaya stopped. She noticed Jaina was staring at her. "What's wrong?"

Jaina shook her head. "Nothing. I was just…surprised. I mean, everyone thinks you're so quiet, and the last time, at the Temple…you didn't say much."

"Sorry."

"That's okay." They had come to the base of what might be a mountain. A cave yawned in front of them as they drew up to the group, which had gathered around the opening. "You don't need to apologize."

"I know. I do it a lot. It's for the same reason I also don't talk that much. I get nervous." Gaya lowered her voice. "See, I…have this thing called Krandyn's Disorder. And it keeps me from understanding stuff like people's tones of voice and facial expressions. So I don't know how they feel about me, and I don't know exactly what they mean. So I get nervous."

There was another long silence, and then Jaina said, "Um…yeah. That makes sense. That you'd be nervous. Considering."

"Hey ladies, I think you might actually want to hear this information," called Bane, and both girls turned toward her as she began to talk.

The Anzati appeared one by one out of the early evening fog, leading the party down into their underground village. Their guides were three in total, two males and a female. Gaya had expected them to be tall and slender; solemn, grave, elegant people who looked like they possessed the cosmic enlightenment Bane claimed they did. Instead, she saw that, although their individual heights and weights varied slightly, the Anzati were basically a smaller, stockier people, adapted through millennia to the low ceilings of the caves and grottoes they inhabited. Their eyes were narrow and kirbli-nut shaped, with red irises and thick, dark brows and lashes. Their hair- thick, black and as fine as silk fibers- was worn long, and as the apprentices watched, it twisted and swirled of its own accord, as if it were being blown by an imaginary wind. Bane explained that Anzati hair was extremely sensitive, constantly probing the air for everything from changes in pressure to the sound of approaching quarry or threats. The Anzati were omnivores, like humans, but instead of consuming meat, their primary source of protein and iron was blood, which also explained their sharp teeth. From the Anzati, who were dressed simply in non-dyed tunics or jackets with loose, short trousers (the males) and wraparound dresses or sarongs with tunics or jackets (the females), and who acted respectful and very friendly to Bane, who was not a stranger to their _uzo_, had come the galaxy-wide myths of the ghastly, undead, irresistible creatures known as _vampires_. In fact, Bane explained, although the Anzati could render their enemies unconscious through a mode of telepathy not unlike hypnosis, they rarely drained the blood of anything but animals. The only exception would be if they felt their community was in danger; to them, there was no higher good than the _uzo_.

All male Anzati were warriors, as the apprentices saw- every male approaching maturity seemed to carry his own weapon. Yet all decisions regarding the government of the clan were made by a council of females; these women were led, when the efficiency and decisiveness of executive leadership were necessary, by a clanmother. This female, Vetala Xiani, reacted to Bane's arrival with every indication of happiness. She had met Bane many years ago, when Bane had first escaped the Imperial court, and the freighter she had bought passage on crash-landed on Anzat. In those days, there had not been an outsiders' settlement on the planet, and Bane would have died had she not found the Vetala. Xiani had been less experienced then; she and Bane had taught each other leadership. It had been years since the women had last seen each other, but to an Anzati, this was practically no time at all. Xiani invited Bane and all her students to eat with the tribe, but privately, Bane instructed the apprentices not to eat much of the uzo's food, to stick to their rations as much as they could. "It's autumn here, and they need to stockpile as much food as they can for the winter."

In honor of their guests, the Vetala had prepared a few entertainments before the clan retired for the night. Several of the younger ones, coached by a few patient, cheerful younger females, performed a skit that, according to Bane, was based on their creation myth. An oral recitation of the uzo's history followed; none of the apprentices could follow either attraction, since they did not speak the Anzati language, which was half telepathy anyway. The evening concluded with a dance and folksong performed by an unusually slender girl about their age. She was very talented, with a high, pure, crystalline voice and a light-footed way of moving that made her feet seem as though they hardly touched the cavern floor. Darth Bane explained that she was Vetala Linxo, the Force-sensitive who would accompany them back to Coruscant, possibly the daughter of Xiani. It was hard to know for sure; all children were raised communally within the clan.

Gaya would have loved to stay awake and process all that had happened that day, but to her surprise, as soon as she rolled herself into her sleeping bag, she began feeling drowsy. She slept for a time, and awoke during the night to find that the cave the apprentices had camped in was nearly black. She lay awake, listening to the sounds of the cave and trying not to feel alone in the dark- Jaina and Ranjana slept on either side, Bane near the entrance, Chad and Cody a meter or two away- when she realized that both Cody and Bane's sleeping bags were empty.


	10. The Caves of Althingard

The passageway was almost totally black, with the glitter of mineral deposits and tiny jets of water trickling down the rock walls reflecting the light of distant torches and embers, casting a thin, silvery glow. The only sound was the dripping of the water; Gaya's footsteps seemed to echo on the stone floor as she pulled herself slowly along the hall, trying to avoid slippery patches.

She had no idea where she was going or, if Bane and Cody actually were in trouble, what kind of help she could realistically offer them. But she'd tried to wake Jaina, and that hadn't worked- the girl was too heavy a sleeper- and Ranjana had just muttered something in what was presumably Tusken and rolled over. And Chad…that was just not an option. The last thing she wanted was him walking behind her in a dark passage neither of them knew well.

She was by no means the ideal apprentice for this. But there was no one else, so it was going to have to be her.

She had taken Jaina's lightsaber. She'd left a note on her digipad explaining what had happened. She hoped Jaina wouldn't be too pissed.

She could see what looked like a cave entrance up ahead; it glowed faintly orange with flickering firelight. She pointed her feet toward it.

She was sure there was something behind her. She didn't dare look over her shoulder because…why? She didn't want to admit to herself that she thought it might be an actual possibility? Or she was just afraid that she might actually see something? She tried to listen- maybe Chad had woken up, maybe he was coming- but all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears.

She crouched down and peered ever so slightly around the edge of the opening. Bane and Xiani sat on mats around a low fire. Gaya breathed out. So there Bane was; but where was Cody?

Still, out of curiosity- and because she couldn't yet force herself to vacate the warm corona of light coming from the entrance- she made sure neither woman could easily see her, and leaned in as close as she dared, straining to listen to the conversation over the crackling fire. They appeared to be speaking in Basic, a fact which struck Gaya as narratively convenient but unlikely, until it occurred to her that Xiani might not want other Anzati to hear what she was saying, whereas Bane would not be expecting her apprentices to want to wander through damp, labyrinthine caves in the dark just to eavesdrop on her.

"Are you certain of it?" Xiani was asking uneasily.

"Of course I'm not certain. Any sensible citizen of the galaxy would laugh me out of the room for just considering it. But this stuff…circumstantial evidence, I guess you could call it- it's piling up. I mean, think about it. You people have that one cavern, where you say that a- what was it?- a giant blood-sucking serpent of some kind lives there. How likely is that, though? You say none of the other uzos have experienced anything like it. So considering no one's even seen the thing, isn't it more likely that it's…it? Her?"

"Bane, we must be careful. _You_ must be careful. Do not speak of this to your apprentices. Especially not Linxo." Xiani shifted. "What other 'evidence' have you seen?"

"My tribe had a cave like yours. We were told the evil god Lochi lived there, and that if we disturbed him, he would feed us to his harem of blood-sucking witches. We're…highly inventive with our cautionary tales."

"I thought your tribe were…what is the word? You roam around."

"Nomadic. Yes. But for a few months out of the year, our planet- or at least, where we live- gets these constant sandstorms. So when it gets really bad, we take shelter in this group of caves under Whitesun Peak. We call it _Althingard_- the place, the season, everything. The Chalahari have caves they use for that, too. You can't live outside for prolonged periods during a sandstorm, even if you seal up your tent completely." She peered into the fire. "But one of those caves- a big one, the deepest one- we couldn't live there. The only ones who'd even visited were our shamans. It was forbidden to go into it without a specific spiritual purpose; there was almost always this big stone rolled over the entrance. It was forbidden to bring in light of any kind. Our shaman Echydna used to say the entrance to the pit of Hell was down there. And there's something else." Both Xiani and Gaya leaned in closer to hear.

In a low voice, as if saying it at all brought her a deep and abiding shame, Bane mumbled, "They used to do human sacrifice down there."

Xiani's narrow eyes became wide, almost mouse-like. "What do you mean?"

"What I said. It was long before my time, I never saw it happening. Before my mother's and grandmother's times, too. I only know about it because before the Empire took me, I was Echydna's apprentice because of my Force-sensitivity, and she told me once. The adults of the tribe never liked to talk about it. They were ashamed." Bane's large arms gesticulated expressively, causing the shadows on the wall and ceiling to dance. "Every few years or so they would take either a boy or a girl- usually it was a boy, I never knew why- and when it got to be winter, and the tribe went up to Althingard, there would be a big celebration to mark the closing of the old year. And after the celebration, the shaman would escort this person- and I don't want you thinking it was a kid; it was always a teenager, or a young adult, they never did it to kids- to the deep cave. The stone would be rolled back, the shaman and the boy would go through- and then a few minutes later, the shaman would come out. Not the boy. And they'd roll the stone back, and that would be that. Except sometimes people claimed there were screams, after the stone was rolled back." Bane shook her head. "Echydna said they would always give the person a lot of alcohol, to lower their awareness, I guess, and to dull…whatever pain they thought there might be. Sometimes…sometimes, she said, they would sort of…feed the person up all through the year. Like they were going to be eaten. The Chalahari did that a lot, she said. They also used more girls than us. Girls are more disposable to them. But they stopped a few years after we did, apparently. We refused to intermarry with them again until they did. No Thar woman wanted that to happen to one of her daughters."

"What made you stop?"

"From what I can tell, it was several things. First of all, it was a bloody practice- and we have some pretty bloody practices, but this was the worst- and nobody felt good about it. Parents were too worried about their kids; the lottery was tainted, there was bribery going on- it wasn't even fair anymore. Plus, this was around the time the settlers started coming over en masse, and it's hard to act indignant about insults like "savage" when you're doing a thing like human sacrifice. Plus, the settlers didn't sacrifice anything, and nothing was happening to them. So the tribe voted and got it stopped. For a few years, they would hold an annual vote about whether to start it again, but they even stopped that because it was so pointless- it was always a pretty unanimous no.

"But that's what all the stuff in the Jedi Temple made me think of. All those bones- especially that pile of skulls. They were swept into this neat pile- it was almost geometric. Very ritualistic. And it was so dark- the lower levels weren't so bad, because the emergency lighting still worked fairly well- but the main level, the upper levels…all the lighting had been sabotaged. Purposefully. And all the windows on the main levels had these thick blackout curtains. Newer curtains, and well-maintained. As if they'd been kept up. So that light couldn't enter those parts of the Temple. It made me think of the deep cave at Althingard."

"Do you believe that the…_entity_ that we _may have _here is the same type your people appeased? Why would a thing like that care about this Temple?"

"I don't know. I mean, I guess Coruscant really doesn't have any deep, unexplored spaces underground anymore, so if you wanted a big, vacant place to dwell, that would definitely be a place. But then I guess the question becomes, why would this thing want to come to Coruscant?"

"Could it be a…Sith thing?" Xiani voiced the question tentatively, as if hoping she was wrong.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because…you know we were once invaded by the Sith, when they were under the command of the one they called Darth Bane, before, it is said, she smashed her own empire and the Sith disappeared. We were…terrified of Bane, although she was not so harsh with us as she was in her later conquests. Her own men were terrified of her as well. You could tell. And there were rumors…they said she did things with the Force that could not be done. But we were frightened because we had never met a human who was…like us. Who could do with her mind what we can.

"Down in the valley, there are uzot that believe her essence never died. That she is still in this universe. That she is stronger than death. It's one of the reasons we were so suspicious of you at first. You were a human and an outsider bearing her name."

"_So Bane the First WAS a female!"_ Bane pumped a fist in the air. "_YES!"_

"Hush! You will wake someone!" hissed Xiani. "I want none of my clan to learn of this theory. They would panic."

"Sorry. It's just that we just discovered all these old diaries in an archaeological dig on Korriban, and they seem to suggest pretty conclusively that she was, but we've had all this resistance from these male Sith enthusiasts who used to work under the Emperor, because they say that since on average women are weaker than men, there were no women Sith. If your uzo memory banks are as good as I think they are, those sexist bastards can suck it."

Xiani threw up her hands. "I am telling you that a long-dead Sith may be roaming our land, and that is the piece of information that makes the greatest impression on you? What gender she was?"

"You don't understand. Gender is a big thing out there. Almost bigger than sexual orientation, even species orientation. Our genders are assigned by nature, so gender roles are fluid for us. Here, you guys have men fighting and hunting because that's generally their specialty, and you have the women doing the childcare and diplomacy and political stuff because that's what they tend to be good at. And people choose which one they want, so it's okay. It's not like that for us. You wouldn't believe some of the crap our own Republic's statesmen have spewed, let alone what the Empire used to say."

"Listen, Bane, you say the Empire guarded that Temple until your battle at Endor," said Xiani, apparently trying to get things back on track. "You knew its soldiers. What did they say about it?"

"Come to think of it, there were some rumors. I know that Temple patrols were thought of as a really crappy assignment. Troopers would rather work Nar Shadaa than the Temple. And that always struck me as weird, because it's guarding an abandoned building in one of the most advanced cities in the galaxy. You'd think that would be cushy. But they said it was given to people the Emperor wanted to make disappear. But nobody would really tell me about it. Not even Lord Vader. He hated for me to bring it up." She didn't like to think of those memories; Vader had been a fearsome person to have angry at you, but beyond that…while she was in the Emperor's court, Vader had become her teacher, and her rock. He had lost his wife and child in the Clone War (or so she'd thought at the time), and her own family was either far away or about as affectionate as a duracrete wall. In a sense, they had adopted each other, and deep down the idea of Lord Vader being frightened of anything still bothered Bane. "I know at one point they tried to have administrative offices there. It didn't work."

The silence grew loud with the hiss and pop of the fire. Finally, Xiani said softly, "What can I tell my people?"

"I don't know. Maybe nothing yet. Not 'til we know more. I have to get back to the Core so I can contact my tribe and grill Echydna for what she knows. I need to have a look at some Sith volumes. Some files from the Temple we recovered, maybe. I'll tell you everything I know as soon as I know it. But you know, I'm not sure there's much urgency. This entity, whoever it is, hasn't made much of a move for centuries. I can't think why it would change its policy now- unless…oh gods."

"What?"

"He was appeasing it! Maybe. The Emperor. That's what those temple patrols were for, especially the one young Cody described to me. And now that he's stopped…still, there's nothing we can do yet. We have to wait for the other shoe to fall. Hell, we have to wait for the _first_ shoe to fall." She rattled off a string of Tusken. "That's an expression we have. Basically, it means, 'we'll know what is going on when it blows up in our faces.' Of course, that's not a direct translation."

"Should I move us?"

"I don't know that there's much point. It can probably hunt you down if it wants. I wouldn't tell people about this. If it's nothing, and we tell them, they'll be panicking for no reason. If it's really bad, and we tell them, they'll still be panicking for no reason because if it's that bad, there's probably nothing we can do."

"Perhaps I should send a male with Linxo. So that, if something does happen, together they can preserve-"

"Don't get crazy on me, Xiani. This is not going to be the end of the Anzati people. It's not even going to be the end of this uzo. You weathered the Bane the First invasion and you'll weather this too." She yawned and stretched like some sort of feline. "There's nothing we can do tonight. Tomorrow, when it's daylight, I'll light a torch and check things out down there. In the meantime, I for one am going to get some sleep."

Gaya gasped. Feeling almost paralyzed with the dread of being discovered, she forced herself to move- to stumble, and then to run, back down the passage. She thought Bane might have seen her; she couldn't be sure whether or not the New Sith Master had called out to her retreating back.

The tunnel grew steep beneath her feet, slanting down like a ramp before evolving into some narrow, rough-hewn stairs, all before Gaya even noticed the difference. It didn't occur to her until she was already falling that this was not the passage she had come from.


	11. The Chancellor's Office

He felt the cold seeping into his senatorial apartments early that morning, so early it was really still late. The cold was almost a physical presence, invisible tendrils of frost creeping in under the door. He awoke shivering under the thick, soft, warm blankets, skin clammy against the silky sheets. The bedchamber was dark, even with the city lights filtering through the blinds, and even with the city's sounds, the bedchamber was silent. It felt remote, and he felt disoriented and afraid, a feeling he had not had in years. It was as if he had never seen the room before in his life.

_Afraid of the dark,_ he taunted himself. _Like a child_. But it didn't seem funny. Part of him was afraid that if he laughed, if he even thought about the dark in the wrong way…never mind.

Moving more quickly than he would have believed he could outside of battle, he reached over and switched his lamps up to full power, heaving a sigh of relief that he hadn't known he was holding.

But there was still the cold. The warm yellow glow of the lights didn't help. He had a feeling that turning up the heat wouldn't help either.

He reached out through the Force, but it was foggy, and seemed to repel him. He felt blind. The fear surged back up, nearly taking the contents of his stomach with it.

He dressed quickly, pulling a thick, official-looking robe on over his sleep shirt, and pulling his boots on without lacing them.

What Force-connection still remained open to him pointed him toward the Senate building, like a star hidden behind a dust cloud, pulling planets into orbit around it. Every cell in his body shrank back from that building tonight, screamed for him to go far away from it. Which, of course, meant that it was where he needed to go.

At this time of night, the Senate building was lit sparingly, by sickly neon glowstrips. The front desk was long closed, of course, but it was a simple matter to disable the alarms through the Force, and to slip through.

He knew that whatever was happening was on the top floor, in the Chancellor's office. The lift was operational, but he didn't ride it up all the way. He took the emergency stairwell the last few floors. He didn't want the lift to be heard docking on the top floor. On the last stair, he tripped over nothing and nearly fell forward. He realized, after a moment, that it was because his knees were shaking.

It was getting darker, the farther up he went. The lights stayed on, but the shadows grew deeper, and seemed to move at the corners of his eyes. There were so many of them.

Outside Valorum's office, the cold was like a solid layer of ice in the air, but sweaty. He peered into the room, trying to remain mostly out of sight. The office would be empty, of course; Valorum wouldn't be there at this hour. Even he would be at home by now.

The door hissed open before him. He had not pressed the panel, and anyway, it should be locked by now.

The universe seemed to be silent, holding its breath. At last, he forced himself to walk through the doorway.

Valorum was there. He was sitting at his desk. Slowly, his chair turned to face the newcomer.

As the chair turned, a beam of light- from some passing traffic outside, perhaps- illuminated Valorum's face.

After the night and early morning Sidious had faced, his nerves were scraped raw with disorientation, separation from the Force, fear, nausea, and sleep deprivation. As his cool blue eyes, so usually calm and placid, fell on the thing in the chair's face- it couldn't be Valorum, his sensible brain said later, and it was right- a cry tore from his throat and echoed around the chamber.

The Valorum in the chair, watching him now, was a rotting corpse that stared at him through wide, distant, misshapen eyeballs bulging grotesquely from its face. It sat limply in the chair, leering blankly at him, the only sign of animation a faint blue-black light deep in its pupils.

After a few more silent, horrible moments of the dead man's stare, the thing- Valorum as a decomposing body- began to change. It dissolved into black smoke, which reformed itself almost elegantly into a thing- a being- _an entity_ that was most certainly not Valorum.

The cold was still there, but Sidious no longer noticed it, because now the cold was inside him, as if his blood and muscles were frozen solid, weighing him down, anchoring him to that spot before the desk of the Supreme Chancellor. Later, he would half-convince himself it was a bad dream, and some days, he would believe himself. But now, he could only stand, mute and immobilized, before the Master of the Dark Side.


	12. The First One

For a while after hitting the stone floor, Gaya simply lay there. Her first thought was of the pain. She couldn't tell if anything was sprained or broken, never having been in a position to sprain or break anything before- that was the kind of injury that happened to athletes, daredevils, the Jaina Solos of the universe. This pain was more generalized- it was like when you rode the hoverbus home from school on a crowded day, when you were forced to stand and grip the bar or some handhold as best you could. The bus driver would navigate the traffic like a podracer in debt, and inevitably you would lose your balance and fall against a seat, a wall, or other passengers, sometimes hard enough to bruise. This was that kind of pain, but much worse. Gaya supposed she should be glad she hadn't fallen on her head or neck, or broken her back.

Through the sensory cloud that was the pain, Gaya eventually did process other pieces of information. The grittiness of the stone floor might mean dust, which in turn could signify that this place was not often swept, or in use. The darkness around her was at first nearly absolute, so that she couldn't immediately tell the difference between her eyes being open or closed. At length, as her eyes adjusted, she realized there was a slight difference in light quality- when her eyes were open, the world appeared slightly less pitch-black than it did when they were closed. A faint gray light, silvery, like moonlight, was filtering into this cavern from some point far ahead. To even call it 'light' from this distance was generous, Gaya thought; all it was was relative not-darkness. With difficulty, Gaya raised herself to her feet and slowly made her way toward the not-darkness, keeping a hand to the stone wall to steady herself. It was disconcerting, walking over ground you couldn't see. She tried to use the Force to create an outline of it, at least to find out if there were any yawning pits in front of her. It was difficult, although manageable- the Force faded in and out down here, like a hologram's reception when the signal was barely wide enough.

The passage became gradually lighter around her; it was a welcome surprise when she realized the ground was visible beneath her feet. She quickened her pace. It occurred to her that someone like Chad- maybe even someone like Jaina- who was used to Force-sensitivity, who had always had easy access to it, like a third eye, might feel intimidated by not being able to rely on it in this cavern. She took some small pride that it didn't worry her unduly, the fogginess of the Force- that she was able to depend on her other five senses, as she had done most of her life, barring a few moments of déjà-vu and some faint instinct of what the next twenty seconds might hold, which she had always dismissed as intuition.

The passage opened up before her, and she realized where the light came from. The cavern that her passage opened into was easily the most gigantic space she had ever been in, big enough to fit the theater of the Opera House inside with room to spare. It was a round, high-ceilinged room, looking like the inside of an egg. Moreover, the cavern was a geode- the sloping walls and even the floor glittered with gems of some kind. It was difficult to tell what color they were in the dim, milky glow that they refracted. Wedging her thankfully booted feet into the crevices between the gems, which ranged in size from the size of her big toe to larger than her head, Gaya managed to take a few haphazard steps forward into the enormous geode-room.

She nearly stumbled over Cody, who was perched on a large, relatively flat gem, curled almost in the fetal position, knees tucked against his broad-shouldered chest. Gaya jumped when she saw him; until her eyes adjusted to the sight, he'd looked like part of the geology. "Cody!"

He jumped and flinched, turning to look at her. "What the hell are you doing here?" he whispered.

"What am _I _doing here? I woke up and you and Master Bane were both gone, and I found her, but-"

"Keep your voice down," he hissed. "Now listen to me…Gaya. You have to get out of here. Now. You are in danger of dying in a very painful way, and so is everyone else. So get out of here, run up those stairs as fast as you can, find Bane and have her get all the rest of them offplanet. Do it _now,_ before-" But his voice trailed off as his gaze shifted away from her. It was then that Gaya noticed the silver-gray light becoming slightly brighter.

Cody whispered, "Forget it. Too late." He turned and glared at her hard. "Don't talk. Don't move. Let me do the talking, and just try to look…respectful. And harmless."

_For me, that shouldn't be hard,_ thought Gaya, but her heart wasn't in it. She was too curious, too scared, and suddenly too _cold_ to maintain her usual attitude of what she herself admitted was pathetic self-pity.

The geode-arena was vast, and the inconsistent texture of its floor, which featured some large gems that obscured the area behind them, meant that it was hard, from ground level, to see directly across the chamber. Gaya looked in the same direction as Cody, and realized something- the thing the glow emanated from- was coming toward them. She tensed, and gave another jump as, out from behind a large gem outcropping, stepped a young woman.

She was not actually very tall, Gaya noticed. However, like Ardan- the thought of him and her mother sent a twinge of homesickness through her- the woman was one of those people who had a quality of _tallness_ about her- it had something to do with the way those people carried themselves, and with the way they walked, but Gaya could never exactly define it. It had to do with confidence.

The woman was built slender, even petite, only a few centimeters taller than the tallest Anzati. A long mane of red hair, similar to Bane's but longer and slightly less curly and voluminous, hung down below her waist, almost to her knees. The hair framed elegant, angular features, with eyebrows and eyelashes the same color as her hair, making them appear so fair that Gaya almost couldn't see them. Despite the deep orange-gold of her hair and the dark red of her lips, there was something cool about her, and Gaya realized that the woman's skin, which was so fair it looked white, was glowing very softly with an almost fluorescent white light. The woman seemed lit from within, a paper lantern in the shape of a person. She also moved as if she was not actually tethered via gravity to the ground, and only touched it when she remembered that she had to. And though her movements were smooth, there was something restless about her- her shoulders and long neck swayed faintly as she peered at them from various angles, her hands clasped each other excitedly, long fingers entwining.

Wordlessly, with an expression of guileless inquisitiveness, she bent down so that her face was centimeters from Gaya's. One white finger traced Gaya's features and neck, and momentarily stroked her hair. Gaya tensed; she wasn't one of those people with Krandyn's who typically got freaked out about physical contact, but she did wish this random woman, no matter how beautiful and eerie she was, would stop touching her.

The woman seemed to sense Gaya's discomfort; still looking good-natured, she stepped back and said something to Cody in a language Gaya didn't understand. Nevertheless, she knew she had heard it before, very recently. She realized she had heard two of the New Sith- Witicca and the Twi'lek, the one who didn't seem to like her, Apathian- speaking it.

Cody tapped Gaya on the shoulder and bent close to her ear. His breath felt pleasantly warm in the air, which had grown inexplicably cold, and Gaya felt tiny bumps rise on her shoulder and neck as he spoke. "Gaya, this is the spirit of Darth Bane the First. She's this…kind of a ghost. But solid. Because she drinks blood. And sometimes she…eats flesh. It makes her physical. I don't want her to kill you. Or me. So please don't piss her off."

Gaya felt her chest constrict out of shock. She took a deep breath, struggling to fully inflate her lungs. "What can I do?" she whispered to him when her voice worked again. "To…help the situation?"

He seemed vaguely surprised at her response. "Uh…I don't know yet. Just be cool."

Gaya nodded. She looked up and saw the woman gazing at her. Aware of the implications of this, Gaya tried to offer a small smile.

Cody and the woman had a brief exchange in the language. Gaya felt sure it was about her, but she knew she could be paranoid about that sometimes. She'd learned that paranoia at her old school.

At length, the woman sat down on a gem across from Gaya, who had stood up as an afterthought (Cody had tried to drop to one knee, but the pointy parts of the floor had necessitated a kind of squat). She motioned for both teenagers to sit.

Then, moving too fast to see, the cool palm of her hand pressed itself to Gaya's forehead. Gaya tensed again, but instead of any kind of pain or paralyzing effect, a series of visual images and brief tableaus like clips from a holovid crowded into her consciousness. For a moment, Gaya struggled to process them, and then she found, to her surprise, that their meaning was obvious once she stopped analyzing them and let them flow around her mind. She couldn't understand if she overthought them, but on an intuitive level, they were fairly clear.

_Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you, or young Cody. I will leave the Anzati in peace, and I will not harm those you came here with._ The silent, mental voice seemed so magnanimous, Gaya immediately felt her terror start to dissipate. Beside her, Cody remained rigid, eyes trained on the woman, who took her hand away from Gaya's forehead and began to converse with him haltingly- she seemed barely fluent in the language she spoke, yet she did not try to speak Basic. Gaya wondered if she knew it. Yet the woman seemed to speak more slowly than Cody did.

At last, Cody turned and murmured to Gaya again. "She wants us to take her to meet with Master Bane. She wants to come back to Coruscant with us."

"Why are we whispering?"

"She hates loud noise. And bright light. It's not because she's…dead, she just doesn't like it."

"Oh. Um, okay." Gaya took a breath. "Is she…pissed at all? Like, at Master Bane for, you know, being in charge and having the same Sith name?"

"I don't think so. Hard to tell."

"Wait. She can understand us, right?"

"The gist of it. I think it's okay. She knows I have to explain things to you."

Gaya looked up at Darth Bane the First. She decided to say something. "Um, it's nice to meet you…my Master." That tended to be a fairly universal way to address Sith who were further up in the hierarchy than you. She was pretty sure Witicca had said that at one point. "Sorry I, um, interrupted your, um, meeting with Cody. I was just afraid something had happened to him. Thanks for not, um, being angry about it."

Bane the First smiled at Gaya. It was a warm, kind smile, and there were only two things about it that seemed even remotely unusual. The first was that the woman had odd teeth- they were bright white, and seemed sharp. The second was that her eyes- when Gaya looked into them briefly; eye contact was no easier when the conversation was mostly telepathic- didn't seem to be any one color. They looked black at first, but then some light was reflected in them and they looked dark, iridescent green. When she blinked, she found that they had changed to a deep black-purple, like wine or very old blood. She wondered if those eyes had any color at all, or if the colors were something her mind was adding, maybe to cope with the existence of a darkness so complete.

She glanced at Cody. In a way that went beyond what her old resource classroom instructor had called "nonverbal cues," she understood that Cody had also noticed the teeth and the eyes, and that he had seen them in action. And she understood that there was nothing any of them- not even Master Bane and the other New Sith- could do to stop the First One from doing whatever she wanted to them, and that therefore, it was best to stay calm and to tell Master Bane what the First One wanted. "I'll go and tell her," she said aloud, and took a deep breath. "But Cody has to come with me…in case I get lost on the way back." Sensing that this obvious lie was not fooling anyone, she murmured, "I'm sorry, Master. But I won't leave him."

She felt Cody tense up beside her, clearly sharing her expectation that Bane the First would decide to dismember them both on the spot. For a few moments, the only sounds Gaya heard were the blood pounding in her ears and the distant _drip_ of some underground spigot somewhere in the cavern.

She looked up at Bane the First. The woman was smiling at them again.


	13. The Date

Commander and Jedi Master Luke Skywalker straightened up as he heard the sound of footsteps walking to the door. Belatedly, he wondered if the zipper on his pants was undone.

One of the newer apprentices, a suave-looking teenage boy, opened the door and stood in the doorway with a disinterested air. "Look, man, we're the New Sith."

"Um, yes. I know."

"Meaning we already have a religion. So you can just take whatever flimsiplast you're going to hand me about the Cosmic Being or that Director guy the Lucasites believe in or whatever and you can shove it up your-"

"_Chad!"_ The apprentice's head jerked forward as the back of it was slapped hard by Darth Witicca. "You idiot, he's no religious wacko, this is Commander Skywalker."

The boy's jaded- and somewhat pained, because of the slap upside the head- expression slipped as he gaped at Luke. "_What?_ Oh my god, man, I'm so sorry-"

"Yeah, you will be once I tell Master Bane," Witicca cut him off. "Get your ass inside and help Jaina and Torturian clean up dinner. I'll deal with you later." To Luke, he nodded pleasantly. "Sorry about him. Born with a solid platinum spoon in his mouth, and now we're giving him Force training. Hell of a combination, right? Anyway, Bane will be ready in a few minutes. You can wait inside."

From the lumpy, probably secondhand couch where he was perched, in the dark, den-like area near the cavernous kitchen, which seemed to function as a general "man-cave" area for the masters, Luke looked at the New Sith Order, and the New Sith Order looked back at him. Jaina and Witicca gave him friendly smiles, Apathian glowered (although, to be fair, Luke had heard that Darth Apathian did not approve of anything very much), and most of the masters and older apprentices (those who'd chosen their Sith names already), plus Chad, were smirking at each other or at him. There seemed to be a communal joke going on, which he was not privy to, and was probably the butt of.

At last, one of them- Darth Torturian, possibly; the young man wore cheap synthetic leather pants, man-jewelry, and way too much hair product- asked bluntly, "Are you and Master Bane gonna bang each other?"

"Uh…" The one thing Luke had never expected to discuss with a Sith was his love life. "No," he replied after mentally getting his bearings. "This is a…professional meeting on neutral turf. Nobody has been more adamant about that than your master."

"That's right," Bane intoned, coming down the stairwell behind them, her voice projecting ahead of her. Luke started, and hoped she didn't notice. She was wearing a dark red and black dress that was totally different- and involved much less fabric- than anything he had ever seen her in before, plus a pair of very tight, very high-heeled black boots that had definitely not been made by Sand People. She was also wearing enough silver Tusken jewelry to melt down and plate a small cruiser with. Her eye makeup was just as thick as usual, but, Luke felt, more carefully applied.

"This," announced Darth Bane emphatically, "is definitely _not_ a date."

"I don't think I believe you," he said later. He looked down into his drink as he said it, realizing it was a remark likely to be perceived as confrontational. It had occurred to him that Darth Bane thrived on confrontation the way most people thrived on oxygen.

So far tonight, she had gotten plenty. The restaurant he had scheduled them at was new and upscale, just off the Lipartian way, and according to Bane, it was strictly for yuppies and the nouveau rich. The restaurant, for its part, seemed to reciprocate her feelings. The tall, slender hostess in perfectly blended makeup had smiled coyly at Luke, but had looked Bane over with a quizzical eye. As she showed them to their table after dithering over their possibly lost reservation, Bane had bent close and hissed, in a stage whisper (she did not seem to do anything quietly), "What a bitch. Probably thinks anyone not wearing designer crap shouldn't be allowed in. And I hope she doesn't turn sideways, or we'll lose sight of her and never find the table."

The Sith Lady's mood had only soured further when she learned that White Banthas were not on the cocktail drinks menu. Now she was nursing a half-glass of wine as if she had a grudge against it, and glaring at him. "Why the hell would I lie about it? Do you think it's helping my Order's credibility, to go to the Senate and go, 'oh yeah, we found a flesh-eating vampire Sith ghost on Anzat, and now she's going to be staying in our basement'? How the hell would that as a lie help us in any way?"

"It's not that I don't believe you, exactly," said Luke in what he hoped was a placating tone. "But Bane, I've done my own research on this. I mean, do you think after my father…do you think I'm not interested in what happens after we die? But all the Jedi sources I've heard say that there is a very specific skill to keeping one's consciousness intact after death, and it doesn't involve…consumption of anything." He paused. "Besides…it involves the living Force."

"So because she's a Sith, you think the living Force is…what? Off-limits?"

"Well, how can you be focused on yourself and simultaneously on all life in the universe?"

"Because I'm alive. So all life in the universe is connected to _me."_ He looked up at her, taken aback. The answer came with almost none of her usual attitude- she had just rattled it off, as if for her it was knowledge so basic that she hardly ever thought about it.

She shrugged at his reaction. "Well, it's true. The living Force- all the Force, actually- it isn't something outside us that we have to sacrifice our lives in service of. It's something we already do serve, with every breath we take. And, apparently, beyond our last breath. The Force isn't on the Jedi's side, Skywalker, any more than it's on the Sith's side. The Force is life; it's on everyone's side. It doesn't care what we do."

"Then why should it matter what we do?"

"Because what we do affects other people."

"But if the Force doesn't care about them, then why should we?"

She laughed disbelievingly. "You mean you don't _know?_ You actually need some grand metaphysical reason to care about other people?"

Luke wanted to say, _of course not; that's not what I meant._ But the words couldn't organize themselves into a coherent phrase in his head. Instead, he said, "I never thought a Sith would lecture me about my lack of empathy."

"If you'd stop letting what Jedi party line you've been able to salvage from my father's iconoclasm do your thinking for you, you'd understand that all this makes perfect sense."

"Well, apparently I _do_ do that, so please explain it to me."

She sat back. "The Sith have always ribbed the Jedi about doing things the same way for millions of years on end, no matter how redundant the policy gets. Now, that's what the Sith are doing. If we're going to survive, we have to either go back into hiding, which I doubt we can do because I don't think the Jedi- namely you- are quite dumb enough to get fooled again, or…we have to make it so you can't get rid of us. So you don't even want to. We have to be…useful. We have to be something good in society."

She shook her head. "I mean, you could kill us all now, but the thing is, you'll always let one of us slip by. And then in another few hundred years, we'll have another Jedi purge, but we'll let one of you slip by accidentally, because that's just how it goes, and then a millennium later we'll be sitting here, talking this all out all over again. And each time, people will die and lives will be wasted and galactic society will come that much closer to total destruction, just so that a few men on either side can gratify- or preserve- their egos."

"So it's better to abandon power than to have it at that cost."

"No. And you sound disapproving."

"No, just…surprised. So how will you get power now?"

"We'll get the non-political kind. We'll study the Force. And as for the political kind…we'll spread it around." She smiled at him. "See, you've learned that power is like energy- once you lose it, you can't get more, and what you lose is wasted. It's not like that at all. When one person has less power, everyone has more."

"Some people are more powerful than others. That's a basic fact. And it's up to those people to-"

"_Is_ it a fact? Are all the powerful people you've ever known Force-users? And how can you know who the Force-users are? Now that we've seen the tests are flawed, however minutely, I don't think you can." She sipped the wine and made a face at its apparent bitterness. "The line is thin, Skywalker. That's the thing I love most about this transition back to Republicanism. All the lines are getting thin. Between rulers and subjects, powerful and powerless, known and unknown, fact and myth, light and darkness, good and evil, even healthy and sick…do you remember that girl with the Krandyn's I was talking to Leia about that day? She found that Cody boy, the clone. And she and Cody talked Bane the First into coming quietly. A deficient clone and a disabled girl. And half the time, Bane the First'll only talk to them."

"I still don't understand what this Darth Bane the First has to do with the Jedi Temple, and with the clone-"

"It's not that complicated," she said impatiently. "Sidious- and probably generations of Sith before him- had been finding her victims to sustain her corporeal existence- she maintains her consciousness through her own power, but she needs blood and living tissue to take physical form. As for motivation, I would guess they were awed by her, and probably afraid of her, too. Cody was a wreck when I first talked to him about her. But she'd taken up residence in the Temple- probably because it's become a center of the Force- and Sidious was bringing her deficient troopers, people on death row, political rivals. She killed the two troopers with Cody, but not him because she sensed his Force abilities-"

"Which it shouldn't be possible for him to have-"

"Yeah, but he does have them. Hell, it's impossible that there should be any serious variation in clones' personalities and physiology at all, but it happens all the time. According to Cody, there's been at least one with severe Krandyn's Disorder, too. Now let me finish. She sensed his talents, and took him on as this kind of servant-apprentice thing, until we found him. She has multiple lairs on planets like Anzat and Tatooine, where there were local people with mythologies she could adapt to suit her needs. She probably has a lair of some kind of Korriban, too. That's basically the Sith homeworld."

"And now she has one in your basement."

"We felt it would be best. We can keep an eye on her. And she might enjoy being around us, which could make her less homicidal, and she might have things to teach the apprentices. We'll see."

"Can I meet her?"

"If she'll see you. We'll raise it with her. She doesn't like being disturbed, but I think we can persuade her to meet you and Leia."

"Thank you."

Luke fidgeted, and she saw. "What the hell's wrong now?"

"Nothing. I had a question."

"Okay."

"Did Vader ever mention me or our mother to you?" It shot out of him so rapidly that he suddenly realized how much he had been wondering about it.

The dull roar of restaurant sounds seemed to fade around them. Bane looked down at her lap. "Just a few times. He thought you were dead. It's… actually why he and I were so close, I think. One of the reasons, anyway."

Luke looked down, too, into his drink. Then he asked, "What was it like, having him for a father?"

"He was a good man. Nobody believes me when I say that, but it's true." She looked up at him, all traces of laughter and even irony gone from her face. Instead, there was grief, like an exposed wound. "_You_ didn't believe me when I said it. When we first met, right before Endor."

_I should have tried harder to believe it._ Aloud, he said, "Actually, I didn't mean…my father. I meant…yours."

"What was it like being the daughter of Emperor Palpatine?"

"Yes."

"Crappy." She seemed glad of the change in subject. "I had no actual power because he never named me as his heir. He uprooted me from my Tribe, and pretty clearly never gave a damn about my well-being. For a while, he used me to project this media image of himself as a father…a sentimental man. But then adolescence hit me like a ton of duracrete and I got too sarcastic. So he started sending me off to all these prep schools, which was how I met your sister, and eventually…I was able to get out. I faked my death; Dack and Leia helped. As far as Palpatine was concerned I was legally dead, and so no longer his problem, and so I went back home, visited my family, and found the New Sith Guild…I always felt bad about leaving Lord Vader behind. But he once told me he wanted me to get out. Away from Palpatine. He was under his thumb, but he still knew what that guy had done. A lot of people knew."

During the lull in the conversation, their food came. Luke reflected that Bane looked somehow softer and almost totally sane in the warm golden light of the restaurant booth. As she cut up her food, her bangles and wristbands clanked together gently; her shoulder-length earrings made faint clinking sounds. Her movements were surprisingly graceful and deft, and for a moment, he could see her as a royal in an Emperor's court.

"How is your brother?" he asked. "Triclops?"

"He's all right. The new medication seems to be working well, but, you know, that's what we thought about the last stuff." She shook her head, causing her earrings to clink more insistently. "And I told him he's got to change his name to something that doesn't sound like a monster from a Dathomirian folk legend, but he hasn't gotten around to it yet. And of course the facility is pitching all sorts of fits over it, because they'll have to alter all the paperwork in his file to whatever his new name will be." She paused and then remarked, "You should bother Ken to get down there and visit him. He says he hasn't seen him in two months."

"Maybe his sense of time is just-"

"No, his sense of time has always been totally unaffected by…whatever he has. And I checked the visitor's log, anyway, and he's right." Her white nostrils flared angrily. "You know, I understand now why Gaya Viviani's parents were so paranoid when they told me about the Krandyn's. Once you label someone, it's like they cease to be an actual person, an adult, an _equal_. To the system…to other people…they become this kind of…perpetual _child_. Not trusted, or believed." She was glaring at him again. "My brother has a _mental illness_, but he's still a grown man. And a _father_. He deserves to see his son."

Luke tried again to say something to soothe her temper. "I know that, Bane, of course I know. I'll talk to Ken about it. And I don't think your brother is a_ child_ just because he's _sick_." He paused to swallow a bite. "And by the way, if I understand Krandyn's Disorder correctly, there's a world of difference between what Gaya Viviani has and what your brother's issues are."

"Only in a medical sense," she snapped, and they didn't speak again until the walk back to the Corridor. Although he didn't understand what she meant, he didn't press her further.


	14. The Beginning

When Bane and the apprentices had arrived back on Coruscant, Gaya had felt incredibly tired. What she really wanted was to go home, to see Ardan and Niama, to sleep in her own bed, at least for one night. Instead, things seemed to have intensified. They had had to present their discovery of Bane the First to a committee of New Republic senators, first of all, only a few hours after touching down. They hadn't had time to sleep, much less shower or change. Bane did most of the talking, irritably, which seemed to shock the representatives into a mollified silence that satisfied Gaya deeply, even through her haze of exhaustion and social overwhelming. She and Cody had both been called on to answer some questions, but generally, whenever possible Gaya had maneuvered herself to the back of the group, and tried to project an aura of invisibility. Bane the First had refused to leave the basement room she had taken up residence in, causing most of the senators to come away looking skeptical. Only Commander Skywalker, Gaya thought, who had been standing at the back of the conference room listening in silence, seemed to believe them, somewhat reluctantly.

Then, they had gone back to the Temple. Gaya hadn't raised the idea of visiting home; she didn't want to look like special arrangements were being made for her- they were, but she didn't need to make it obvious. Bane had seemed to understand, though- after the apprentices had eaten and showered, when most were getting ready to go to bed, she had allowed Gaya to call her parents. Looking back at that time, Gaya's eyes still teared up slightly when she remembered the feeling of seeing their faces and hearing their voices.

"I'm fine, yeah, this isn't an emergency," she'd assured them. "I just wanted to say I was back, and I missed you guys."

Niama smiled consolingly. "Ohhhh. We miss you, too, honey."

"How was Anzat?" asked Ardan. He smiled. "How did you like traveling offplanet?"

"It's not bad." Actually, that was true- at the time, it had been stressful, but looking back, it had been exciting, too. "Anzat's okay. The air smelled really weird, though, and it was…thick."

"Humidity," Ardan explained. "Not so common here, although of course the air does contain moisture."

"Yep. And that smell is what they call fresh air," Niama laughed. "Or so I hear."

Gaya nodded. She didn't know much about Ardan's past, but she felt it had involved some travel. Her mother, though, had never been offplanet. Had never even been to the Capital district of Coruscant. Gaya vowed that one day she would take her mother with her on a trip offworld, but she knew that vow ultimately amounted to a hope that she'd someday be able to.

"Perhaps you'll go to Korriban next, since they claim to be Sith," Ardan mused. "You'll have to take plenty of images of that. They have some of the oldest ruins in the known galaxy there, and most of the famous Sith Lords are buried there. It's quite a sight- or so I've read."

"Have you made any new friends?" asked Niama innocently.

Gaya had forgotten about being tired and overwhelmed. Up until that question. She considered lying and claiming that she was, that she had a circle of friends she fit right into. And it wouldn't be a total lie, because Jaina, Ranjana, and now Linxo of the Vetala and sometimes Cody had started getting together into a social group, and Gaya did eat with them. But she didn't know if they were friends yet. She had been focused on the mission and her studies and hadn't given much energy or thought to social interaction. Besides, she was scared of them- their rejection, or worse, their exploitation of her vulnerable position for their own amusement- and she knew it. She knew she'd have to get past it. But surely there were more important things to put effort into?

"No, Mom," she said wearily. "I'm done worrying about that crap. If it happens, it'll happen. I'm tired of putting myself through the anxiety about it. About whether or not I have as many friends as someone without KD. About whether I measure up." Niama looked like she wanted to argue, but Ardan laid a hand on her arm.

"I love you, guys. I love you, Mom." She would feel arbitrarily guilty for her shortness with Niama, who was only concerned, but despite that Gaya didn't feel she'd necessarily done anything wrong.

She was almost sixteen, older than all the junior apprentices except Ranjana, and it was time she was allowed to run her own social life. Her mother had done it when she was young, organizing play-dates with other mothers from the block or her pre-elementary program. Then, the schools had tried to do it, with painfully out-of-date social skills therapy and even forced "friendship groups" interacting during lunchtime.

Gaya could believe her mother was motivated by love, but the school was just trying to make sure she could pass for non-KD, to sand her down into the round peg they needed for their round hole. That was what most of it was about, she felt, from her social skills to her grades to her phys-ed competence to her weight. Even to her midi-chlorian levels. Measuring up to all the "normal people" in the galaxy. Well, now she was a New Sith, and New Sith didn't have to be normal. To be a Jedi was normal, and the Sith were the opposite of the Jedi. It was a strangely comforting thought.

Her days became a comfortable if tedious routine as the Senate lost interest in Bane the First. Gaya woke up, dressed, ate her meals in the kitchen with the other apprentices- the masters ate in a long, folding table set up in the den- and went to class. Most of them were going well, and her grades were higher than they had been at her old school, although she thought this might have been due more to the more nuanced, individual, even arbitrary grading systems most masters used in the absence of formal marking procedures. The exception was phys-ed. Apathian seemed to dislike her at least as much as her old instructor had; the only difference was that Jaina stuck up for her, and that the material- the martial art Teras Kasi, some basic sparring, and physical conditioning- was more interesting and seemed to have more purpose than endless games of scramball.

She heard a knock on her bedroom door. She had gone upstairs early, fibbing about having unfinished homework. She thought Jaina could tell she was lying. She decided she'd explain soon to Jaina that she did want to hang out with her and the others, it was just she sometimes needed time alone, too. She didn't want them to think she was avoiding them. People never seemed to understand that a person just might need time to herself; they tended to get offended. Or maybe other people didn't need it the same way she did. That was probably it.

She opened the door and found herself looking at Cody's chest. She peered up at into his face. "Um, hi, Cody."

"Hey." He cleared his throat and shifted. "Look…can I come in?"

"Okay." She let him by her and waited as he sat down awkwardly on the bed.

Finally, he said, "I just wanted to say…you were really…good down there in the cave."

"I'm sorry I barged in. I was worried, and a little lost."

"It's okay. I was scared she'd hurt you. But she seems to be…okay with you. The way she was with me when Palpatine brought me to her." He shifted. "Anyway, I'm sorry if I seemed mad at you down there. You handled yourself really well. I'm glad it was you that found me. If it was Master Bane or that Solo girl, they probably would've started a problem." He grimaced. "Or that Chad kid."

Gaya couldn't help laughing. "I'd pay money to see what would happen if Chad walked in on…her. Bane the First."

"That's horrible." But she could tell he agreed and was trying not to smile.

"So," he said at last. "Master Bane says I can have a key to the workout room, so I can go there when I have free time. My unit used to work out together. She said that if you ever wanted to do some extra physical stuff to practice for class, you could use the key too. So I just thought I'd come up and let you know."

"Thanks." She could do that, at least one day a week. She could find a way to drag herself to the workout room that doubled as the gym, despite the bad memories contained there, and just build muscle on some of the old weight machines. It would just be her and Cody; Apathian and Chad wouldn't be there to criticize or tease. She didn't have to reach a goal; she just had to go. She could do that.

Her fingers flew to Ardan's chain. She had found it in his things shortly after he had moved in with her and Niama, all those years ago. It was a thin metal chain, long enough to go around her neck twice, and from it hung a small, round silver pendant with what looked like some kind of family crest, and some letters that Gaya couldn't read. It almost looked like an old-fashioned coin, but she knew it wasn't. Ardan had given it to her when she'd shown interest, and now, she wore it most of the time, tucked under her collar by habit so no one would try to snatch it.

The chain made her think of her parents, but especially Ardan. As she touched it and reveled in Cody's compliment- for once, someone had been glad to have _her_ there, instead of someone smoother, less awkward, or prettier- she knew that she could do this. The workout room, but also this place- the New Sith Temple- in general. She wasn't going to fail, and she wasn't going to run away like she had at her old school. It didn't matter what they did. Gaya knew she was there to stay.

* * *

><p><strong>For anyone who's read this far and wants to know what's next: you can check out my story "The Order: The Ties that Bind," a companioncontinuation of Gaya and "the Order"'s adventures. Thanks for reading!**


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